STOLEN JEWEL BAG BRANDED

Evening Star, Issue 20989, 31 December 1931, Page 12

STOLEN JEWEL BAG BRANDED

SECRET MARK BY ALIEN THIEVES Was a mailbag, which was stolen in a train rushing from Harwich to London recently, and which is believed to have contained precious stones, secretly _marked on the Continent and distinguished in the train from twentyone others by a member of a gang of international thieves? This is the theory held by detectives investigating the theft of the bag. The probability of a secret mark presents a new problem in the web of internatinonal crime. Registered packages from Antwerp, the famous precious stones market, were in the bag. The facts of the theft are:— Twenty-two mailbags from Antwerp were checked at Harwich and placed in the van of the boat train express to Liverpool street station. When the train arrived in London twenty-one bags were found in the van. Somewhere between Harwich and London one mailbag was distinguished —and vanished.

The theory of an identification mark was immediately raised. Yet the bag must have been branded in an unobtrusive way, for officials at Antwerp, in the boat, and again at Harwich did not notice anything unusual. Harwich police at once tried to find whether anyone who had not crossed from Antwerp travelled in the train, and organised a search of embankments and cuttings along the line. Most of the cut diamonds arriving in this country come from Belgium, and are brought by registered post on the Antwerp-Harwich route. Scotland Yard have , been watching during the past few weeks a gang of international criminals who, they were informed by the Continental police, had arrived in England. There was some mystery about their movements, and detectives were puzzled because of their sudden visit. Then the Yard men heard of an intended coup—of what description they did not know—and all their efforts to find out failed.

Detectives were placed on duty in large numbers at various hotels in London. Some of them were disguised as waiters and others as doormen. The criminals kept their secret well. It is now thought that members of the gang who are known to the police were sent to various places, where they knew they were being watched, in order to put the Yard men off their real purpose—the mailbag robbery.