A DARING SWINDLE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 14

A DARING SWINDLE

THE "UP-TO-DATE LADY AND HER

LIMOUSINE.

For ways that are dark and tricks that are vain, lady swindlers, in the opinion of department store managers in convention assembled, " can put it all over " the heathen Chinee (writes the New York correspondent of the " Daily Chronicle "). Take, for instance, the case of the expensively dressed customer, <who alighted from a stylish limousine at the door of an emporium in Newark, New Jersey, a few days ago, and had a couple of hundred pounds' worth of purchases transferred to her vehicle—only to find that she had forgotten her cheque-book. It was " most annoying, because she was leaving her residence in fashionable Morristown the very next morning early for her summer home in the Adirondack Mountains." However, the contretemps could be remedied if the manager would sendi^ an assistant with her to her hueband's office, at an address she gave, in another section of Newark, where the bill would be paid in cash. This was a well-known office building, so a youthful clerk was delegated to accompany her. They alighted at the.office building, on the ground floor of which was a barber's shop; and into this she led the youth and smiled at the proprietor. Two "tonsorial artists" took hold of the clerk and escorted him towards a chair, "What's the idea?" he wanted, to know. They did not inform him. Instead, they tried gently though firmly to seat him for a hair cut, but he became exceedingly angry, and then, as in the mirrored wall he saw the customer pass swiftly out and into the motor-car, he struggled furiously to'free himself. He fought with such effect that he smashed a mirror and some shaving mugs and bottles, shouting the while for help, and the hubbub attracted g» crowd and a policeman.

To the guardian of the police the barber explained that the lady had tipped him ten dollars to cut her son's hair. " He's a big boy, in fact, a young man just out of college," she had told him, _" and may object, but I want his hair cut short just the same." And the barber added that he had promised" to earn her generous pourboire. While the barber was talking the frantic clerk detained by the policeman was also trying to get in his explanation. When at last he was able to make clear that he was the victim of a daring swindling plot the lady and the limousine had vanished, leaving no trace behind.