DIABOLICAL OUTRAGE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 11 May 1912, Page 9

DIABOLICAL OUTRAGE.

The Block Hand Society is still making ibs sinister presence felt in New York. A few weeks ago a member of the organisation was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment by Judge Rosalsky, and the sequel was nearly a horrible tragedy. The. Judge received through the post o. small parcel, which, bore some resemblance to a jewel-box. His suspicions were aroused, and he left the packet on his library table while he telephoned for the police. Several officers came, headed by Inspector Egan, whose special sphere of work lies among the perpetrators of dynamite outrages. The police gathered round the table while the Inspector gently opened the parcel with his penknife, and the removal of a portion of the paper revealed a piece of wood about the size of a thimble attached to a strong wire spring. A quantity of powdered sulphur was found wrapped in tissue paper, and beneath this was to be seen a small section of iron pipe, Avith a dry battery at each end, lying in a bed of scrapiron and lead. If the parcel had been opened in the ordinary way the pulling of the piece of wood would have released the springs, which would have completed the battery circuit arid exploded the dynamite that lay within the pipe. The Judge suggested that the police should take the unpleasant contrivance away, and Inspector Egan replied that there was no danger, since the machine had fallen into the hands of experts. The assurance did not satisfy Judge Rosalsky, and he was leaving the room, when the bomb exnloded with a detonation that shook the t house from cellar to attic. The police were hurled to the floor, and the room was wrecked, but by a happy chance the injury done to the men was slight. Inspector Egan lost two fingers and sustained some slight wounds in the head. He had been examining the box when the oxplosion occurred. The slugs of metal lodged in the ceiling, and the other police officers were merely shaken, while the Judge suffered nothing worse than a severe shock. The perpectrators of the outrage were not discovered, and it is nrobable their offence will go unpunished. Evidently the lot of the nolieernan is no happier in America than it is in comic opera.