TOOK THE TYPEWRITER.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 253, 24 October 1919, Page 5

TOOK THE TYPEWRITER.

IN BROAD DAYLTGHT. IMPUDENT OFFICE THEFT. If anyone had been asked what was the least likely thing to be stolen from an office after the safe, he would unhesitatingly say the typewriter—that is, if he had been asked after the beginning of the week. Since then three firms were deprived of this useful adjunct in a manner that almost suggests necromancy. In one instance the thief had to go into an office where there were several people —not actually in the room where the typewriter was, but near enough to cause trepidation in anyone but a consummate artist in the art of abstraction or someone mentally deranged—walk round a counter, pick up the machine, and walk out of the building, down Shortland Street in broad daylight. Tho typist was not out of the room more than five minutes. In another case, right at the top of one of the highest buildings in Queen Street, the machine was taken while the clerk was at lunch. Machine, cover, and all went in this case. The man who organised the Shortland Street raid was good enough to leave the cover. Of course, once a man got outside an office with the machine under his arm there would not be a great deal of difficulty in getting clear, as it is very common for a youth to be seen carrying -a typewriter to 'be mended, and anyone might easily pass half-a-dozen people in a building where there was a suite of offices without exciting suspicion. In future, however, it will not be surprising if anyone carrying a typewriter should be accosted and asked to explain. As the thefts have occurred so close together in point of time it suggests tha* they are the -work of one man, and people in offices would be wise to either find some means of making their typewriters a fixture to something too weighty to tuck under the arm, or take other means of guarding them. Typewriters are costly things nowadays. It would seem an easy thing to trace a machine, as each one has it 3 own number, but people who ought to know think it is likely that the individual who appropriated these missing machines has them out of the Dominion by now.