INCREDIBLE STORY

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 April 1928, Page 10

INCREDIBLE STORY

TOLD TO DETECTIVES. SYDNEY, April 11. Members of the Criminal Investigation Branch are always interested in anybody who carries luggage through the city, and naturally when Detectives Keeble and Young saw a man struggling with two heavy suit cases yesterday, they eyed him suspiciously. “Now, how much will you bet that those cases don’t belong to him,” said Detective-sergeant Keeble. Overlooking the opportuinty to make a wager, Detective Young suggested that they should “have a word” with the man. So they walked across to him and laying a heavy hand on his shoulder, asked him whege he was going. “To BathursP Street,” he replied. The detectives (together): Why to Bathurst Street, brother? The stranger: I have to give these suit cases to a man there. The detectives: H’m, and what is in the suit cases? • The stranger (diffidently): I —er — don’t know. The detectives (now smiling): And what’s the man’s name? The stranger: I don’t know his name . I met him in a hotel . . . We had a drink together, and he told me to go to his 'room and get the suit cases and meet him in Bathurst Street. True, that’s what he asked me to do. It was the old, old ridiculous story, deljciously naive. The detectives nearly burst out laughing to think that the

man would persist that it was true. They took him to headquarters, opened the cases, and found they contained an assortment of male and female clothes. “Now, come on, old chap,” they said, “tell us all about it. Where did you get all this stuff?” By this time the stranger was beginning to look worried: was beginning, evidently, to realise how unlikely his stroy must seem. Yet he persisted in reiterating it. The detectives then set out to inquire further. They found the owner of the suit

cases, and he told them that he was a visitor with his wife from the country. Ho had met (ho, stranger in an hotel, had had a, drink with him, and given him the key to his temporary lodgings and had asked him, as a favour, to get the suit cases and meet him in Bathurst Street. So. for the first time in their experience, the detective found that the flimsy story of receiving goods from an unknown man in the street was unimpeachably true.