SAFES OF ROMANCE

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 278, 19 August 1932, Page 3

SAFES OF ROMANCE

London’s Deposit Vaults MAN’S LUCKY PENNY London's safe deposit vaults, in one of which Queen Mary recently stored her valuables, are often used for odd treasures. The oldest and most renowned, opened sixty-six years ago, is in Chancery Lane. Its gleaming gates have closed on £1.000,000 in bearer bonds, all in one big parcel; on thirteen sacks bulging with money orders, on stuffed parrots, uncut diamonds and a first folio of Shakespeare. One of the strangest deposits that this stronghold ever guarded was a torpedo, left there while the inventor negotiated with naval powers. An Egyptian mummy of great value also lay in the vaults for some years. One of the vaults holds a brown suitcase that will one day either convict a man as a swindler, or establish his innocence. Some months ago this suitcase was left by two men, oue of whom had just made a payment of about £lOOO to the other on a quantity of platinum. This sum represented half of the total involved, and the suitease—presumed to contain the platinum —was jointly deposited until the payment of the balance next day. The following morning the buyer turned up to claim the suitcase, but in accordance with the agreement lie cannot get tlie bag until, a year has elapsed without a sign of the second party. ■ One day a man In shabby clothes hired a safe in oue of Loudon’s safe deposit vaults and put a single penny in it. It was his lucky coin, and he was haunted by the fear of losing it. The penny stayed there thirty years, and year after year tlie men at the doorsaw the man growing better dressed, bls manner more assured. When he died lie left a fortune of £100,006. Then his heirs took the penny away.