BRIGHT BURGLARS

Evening Star, Issue 20054, 20 December 1928, Page 11

BRIGHT BURGLARS

THE PYJAMA TRICK Under the heading of “ Police Outwitted,” the papers recently described how, after a collision with a tram, the driver of a ’ar asked a policeman to guard it while he telephoned his employer. The constable did so, for hours, but the man never returned. The car was a stolen one. '• Outwitted ” hardly fits the_ above case, but here are some to which the term could he applied (writes a London tx-police inspector). Asked to keep an eye on a house r.nile the residents were away, I noticed one evening that a black thread I had twisted round the latch of the garden gate was broken, and another “ detector ” was disturbed. Someone had entered. Investigation, however, revealed no signs of tampering with doors or windows. I watched the house for a while, and was rewarded by seeing a gleam of light slant , from the Venetian minds of a bedroom window. Posting a colleague at the back, I • gave a vigorous knock on the front door. If a burglar was in the house I knew that the light would be instantly extinguished. But it wasn't. After further knocking, the blinds were pulled ujp, the window opened, and a man in • pyjamas leant out and shouted. ‘‘Who’s that? What’s the matter ? ” Obviously no burglar! Burglars don’t talk like that. Nor do they wear pyjamas, o. stick their heads, with tousled hair, out of bedroom window's. He told me 1 was right in assuming he was the man who lived in the house, and that urgent business had brought him back alone. I apologised for disturbing him, and went. And so, later, did he—taking with him everything of value in the house. A clever touch—putting on those pyjamas.

A chat is a welcome relief to the monotony oi walking along roads where nothing ever happens, and once, when I was a constable, I stayed quite ten minutes watching and chatting with three men who were taking furniture into a house from a van. I helped, in fact to steady a big wardrobe. Next day, in, the afternoon, _an irate householder came to the station. He and his wife had been away for three days, and had returned to discover that their home had been stripped of its furniture! 1 stated that I had seen furniture being taken in, but certainly not out, A mystery! Two years later it was solved, when a crook, ill in hospital, told me that when I came round the corner he and his pah were busy taking furniture out of the house, but, that he had given a quick order to reverse the operation. So while I remained they solemnly took pieces of the furniture back again and then, when ,1 had gone, brought it out and repacked it. I once went to a lodging house to arrest a man, and his landlady, truthfully, said he was in. “ His room! Top floor back! ” she informed me, correctly. I went up, but the room was empty. My man had been in a first-floor room, and had quietly cleared out, and off, when I had passed that floor. Outwitted by the truth, and a landlady!