LOVER HIDDEN IN A FLAT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 2 May 1928, Page 9

LOVER HIDDEN IN A FLAT.

A SERVANTS TRICK. CONCEALED THREE MONTHS. BERLIN, March 3. One of those flagrant infractions of probability which only the most daring novelists presume to put into print came up before the .Berlin courts this morning a« an undubitable fact. Berta Obst is a general servant, and one evening when she returned' from an outing with her young man it was suggested: that if they opened the back door very quietly, perhaps he might slip into, the flat unnoticed. There was nothing very unusual in that, hut what is certainly phenomental is that he remained in the flat three and a half months without being discovered. During the day he crept under the bed when anyone was about, hut he was not compelled to spend very much of his time in this uncomfortable lair, for the gill’s master and mistress were both engaged in business. In circumstances which will not be divulged, their 16-vear-oid daughter was taken into the servant’s secret. So the household might have continued till this day had not the clandestine visitor taken advantage of Berta’s visit to the pictures to make rather violent advances to the daughter of the house, some of whoso secrets he had learned and now used against her. lie so torrilied the girl,- however, that she made a clean breast of everything to her parents. The sequel was unusually lurid, if not quite as unlikely as the three months’ residence under the bed. When the intruder was summoned to come out, he replied with a revolver shot. The next thing, of course, was to call in the “Raid Command’’ of police, which is armed to meet all possible emergencies of this kind. But the man was not or ignominious capitulation. IJo had barricaded the dcor and enlarged the keyhole to fit the barrel of his pistol, from which lie kept up a. lively lire whenever he thought- he had a chance of hitting an animated mark. The police replied in multiple volume, and the door panels and furniture suffered rather heavy casualties.

The fight went'TTn until the besieged man had exhausted all his ammunition, when he surrendered like a lamb. For reasons which are not immediately obvious the Bench described the case as Leing parallel to the schoolboy tragedy which recently caused so great a stir here, and it was decided to hear the whole of it in camera.