WHEN THE PORTER WENT A-BURGLING.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 95, 21 April 1906, Page 13

WHEN THE PORTER WENT A-BURGLING.

A ATTSTERY SOLTEX/.

LONDON. March 0. At the early age of nineteen Richard Jones, erstwhile a night porter at Haxell's Hotel in the Strand, has a career behind him with enough, material In it for a large volomf of short stories. Last November .Tones was found bound and gagged, and apparently insensible, at his post in the porters' room at the hotel. On the police being called in it was discovered that a small safe, containing some £30 in cash, had disappeared from the cashler'e office. Poor .fonps was in a stare of collapse when released from hia bonds, but on being restored to consciousness, he told story of how two men had driven up to the hotel in a cab and asked for rooms, how on his turning to his desk to record their names they knocked him silly with, a sand-bay anri rhen. having , gagged and bound him, gave him another blow which rendered him oblivions to things mundnneThe police apparently gave credence to Jones' story, but really they were somewhat suspicious at his bona tides. But months passed, and beyond the fact that the safe was •.'ound broken open on Wanstead Plata no further clue could be found. One detective, however, suspected that. Jones was not entitled to the sympathy lavished ipon him aa the victim of a brut.'il assault, and the fact that during Tones' tenure of the night-porter-ship many visitors to the hotel had suffered minor losses in jewellery, etc., strengthened his convictions. So he set himself to watch Jones, and soon discovered that the night porter's boon-com-panions when off duty were chiefly people unfavourably known to the force. Still the detective could find out nothing , to justify him in arresting Jones nntil the New Year was well under way. On January sth there was a burglary at Hackney, the sole clue left by the perpetrators being a brass button of peculiar pattern. A week later Jones was arrested by a detective under—the Crimes Prevention Act, and when searched at the police station was found to have a "jemmy" in his trousors. Oα being arraigned before the magistrate another detective happened to notice that Jones was wearing a. waistcoat with peenllar metal buttons—and also that one of them waa missing! The Hackney burglary flaehed across his mind, and in a few minutes the button picked up in the burgled Hackney house wa.9 produced Iα Court. It was aa exact replica of those an -Tones' waistcoat, and, cennled with the presence of a jemmy in hie trousers, quite convinced the police that tie ex-night porter at Haxell's was the party responsible for the burglary. The magistrate took the same view, aid gave Tones 18 months' hard labour. There is now very Tittle doubt that the rabhexies at Haxell's were his wort also, or that he concocted the plot to steal the safe and allowed himself to be g>nea and bound bj; contatemia*