£40,000 MISSING.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 110, 11 May 1908, Page 3

£40,000 MISSING.

TRUSTED CLERK IN FLIGHT

PARAGON'S DOWNFALL

• PARIS, March 12. A man named Leboux, engaged as chief clerk in the office of a Paris agent de change, or official stock and share broker, has fled. His accounts are wrong by some £40,000, but why he stole, as the police allege he did, and what he did with the proceeds are complete mysteries. Leboux is well known in Paris as an amateur musical composer of considerable talent, ""and many of his compositions are favourite selections at Paris concerts and soirees. He assumed the name of De Chateau, Thierry de Reaumanior, and it was in this name that he received all his letters and acquired his reputation as a composer. Leboux has been in the employment of M. Leuba, stockbroker, for the past eignc years, and his employer had the most implicit confidence in his clerk. Leboux had a salary of £400, and was considered a paragon of virtue. He was deeply attached to his wife, to whom he had been married several years. ■ "I knew M. de Beaumanoir's daily life to a quarter of an hour/ said his concierge this evening. "He left the house every morning for his office at a quarter past nine and came back to lunch at a quarter to one. He went back at 2.30 and returned home at five, when, if the weather was fine, he would take his wife for a stroll, returning to dine at 9.15. He would then go out again for three-quarters of an hour andcome back to sleep at 11.30. He paid all his accounts with regujarity.

Leboux, it is learned to-day, went straight from Paris to Nice, where his wife was recuperating from an illness. He arrived there on Sunday and entered his wife's rooms, "I am a robber," he told her abruptly. "I have stolen nearly a million francs."

His wife laughed, not believing that he could by any possibility be serious in his avowal. But he repeated it, adding that he must take flight. He bade her an affectionate farewell and disappeared.

His flight was rendered easier by his employer's complete confidence in him. M. Leuba's manager called the attention of his employer to irregularities in Leboux's books. M. Leuba merely called in Leboux and asked him to put his accounts straight if anything was wrong. Leboux did not return to the office next day, and then his employer lodged a complaint. A warrant for Leboux's arrest has been issued.