SKYLINES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 50, 28 February 1935, Page 15

SKYLINES.

NEW YORK HOLD-UPS. THE "CASH-AND-CARRY" MEN. ROUTINE BANDITRY. (By a Special Correspondent.) NEW YORK, January 20. A cash and carry hold-up in this town is a slick extraction, moving with flawless speed along charted channels. It's all a routine, and even if the man who hands out the money still manages to get a jolt of excitement out of doing so the man who takes it is not so fortunately situated. He, poor fellow, looks bored.

These cash and carry transactions are not the liold-nps that, are viewed with alarm on one side of the fence and pointed to with pride on the other. They are strictly business. They occur here and there about the town in all sorts of retail stores, ranging from the fragrant saloon on Tenth Avenue to the loud-smelling toiletries dispensary on Park Avenue. Forty dollars is taken here, sixty dollars there.

And wherever it happens, it's always the same old story —a man with a gun, hat pulled over his eyes, asked for cigarettes, said "Stick 'em up," got away clean. A minute later, the noise of radio cars swells through the city. They get away clean, too. Not many people beyond the immediate circle of confusion arc interested, and the newspapers have to carry it in the unexpected arrivals department oil page 90. Keeping Out of the News.

From the way the boys work one might think they were directed by some central group. No sinister genius of evil. Nothing fancy. Just some chunky, cigar-smoking business men who keep their silly little gunmen from treading on each other's toes.

For instance, very rarely is the same store robbed twice in one week. When that happens, it always seems an accident. Generally a decent interval is allowed to lapse. One druggist who lias been visited eight times in tho last eight months by cash and carriers says that when he is robbed, the other merchants on tho street breathe easy for a. week. Because it is news when the same block is tapped too frequently. He adds that the bandits come in pairs and, though the same pair never came twice, cach knew without looking iust where to tuck the merchant away 'before searching the cigarette cartons, the powder boxes and medicine bottles in which he hides his money. They put him in a broom closet in the rear of the store. Can there be a map of tho store among the filing cabinets of the chunky, cigar-smoking business men? It this is a fantastic idea, it is also a fascinating one. And, fantastic or not, the muddle-wits behind the guns have so stereotyped their labours so studiously avoided a glaring temptation to depart from routine, that it almost seems somebody is behind them, schooling them in the way to avoid the bark of°the Press and the bite of the public. Retailers' associations may pass resolutions. Chambers of Commerce may deplore. But as long as the hold-ups are carefully spaced and carefully routinised, the spotlight of the front page, in which they die like 'snakes in the sun, must seek other, more pressing targets.

In the West Point Manner. The West Point cadets here to see a football game, taught New York, the father of the American language, a fewwords the town is rolling over speculatively. To help you understand what you may hear on the screen or read in the gossip columns a few months from now, we append a few hastily gathered ones: — Stand-in —Noun, meaning backscratcher; verb, meaning to scratch someone's back. Boodle—Sweet dessert. Butt —The tail end of everything. Around the Town. A planter in Ceylon lias subscribed to a C'arioca correspondence course offered by a local atelier of the dance . Mae Murray, 51, still sheds glamour with her stiff-legged walk, her bobble of blonde hair, and pout of red lips . . Every tow-rounder lies awake nights hoping for an invitation to one of those free wine parties liquor merchants are throwing these nights to advertise their wares, and Erskine Gwynne, who supervises some of them, lies awake nights hopincr he hasn't forgotten anyone. Stranges sight of the week: A Chinese beo-far on Broadwav . . . Oddest sight of The week: A beggar plying his trade amoiif the garbage-pickers and reliefrollers of the east side slums He says thev know what it's like, and otter the best prospects . . . Hcdda Hopper has worn twice in succession a hat with a hole in the top, through winch a curl swirls . . • Dorothy Mekail, the former film star, had her entrance into a ni"lit club observed by the band break"You Ought to be in the Pictnr«£.". — (N.A.N. A.)