ST. PETERSBURG POLICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12853, 29 April 1905, Page 5 (Supplement)

ST. PETERSBURG POLICE.

DINE OFF GOLD PLATE.

"So you are going to St. Petersburg, are you?" said Rabinski, a Russian jeweller, who has his principal place of business in Berlin. He ma the above remark at the time I Happened by chanc.->. to meet him at the Hotel Bristol in the German capital (says a writer in the Penny Magazine).

" Well," he continued, " if you are honoured with an invitation to the house of certain high police officials up there you will be served with pineapple that cost thirty shillings each ; and you will eat it from gold plate ; and I want to tell you now that that very gold plate belongs to a customer or mine in St. Petersburg. Of course, you know that the Russian police system, through the dishonesty of its head officials, is comparatively worthless. Russian policemen are quick to discover thefts, quick, to capture and punish offenders ; but when it comes to the return of property taken along with the offenders— the bulk of such 'recovered' property never reaches the rightful owners. My story illustrates this fact. "The customer I spoke to you about—the man who owns the gold plate now in the houses of certain police officials—was robbed of a, portion of the plate, which I had made for him. It was about as fine a lot of gold plate as 1 have ever sent to St. Petersburg for an ordinary citizen. He was a mere merchant of the third class, but he was rich enough to buy plate as good as any used by a banker of the tirst class. One night a part of that plate was stolen from his house. He reported the theft to the police, who actually found the thieves and sentenced them to a long term in prison. But not a clue could the police get to the whereabouts of the stolen plate. The thieves simply would not say what had become of the treasure. " My customer—who is also my friend — then set to work to try to find his property. The capture of the thieves followed so close upon the robbery that he was convinced that tlie plate had not been taken out of St. Petersburg. What more reasonable, then, than to suppose that they had sold it to someone 111 the capital? And what; more natural than that they should have sold it to a goldsmith? So among the goldsmiths my customer began to make inquiries, with the result that he really did find his property— in a goldsmith's shop, but in the shop of a silversmith. The plate bore his aims and his initials, and he claimed it.

" I should say that he conducted his searching operations in company with a police detective. Now, when he claimed his property, the detective told him that, in order to prove that the plate was really his, he must send to the police some other article from the chest from which my customer affirmed that his plate had been taken. My friend gladly sent the chest with its entire remaining contends to the police bureau. He waited a day or two; then he went to the police bureau and asked if they had his plate ready to deliver to him. The police officials pretended that they had not yet made up their minds that he- was really the, owner of the plate. "My friend then went to the shop of the silversmith where he had seen his stolen plate ; but now it was not ill the shop, and the silversmith bewailed the fact that the police had taken it away without giving him as much as a rouble. That game of the police officials was kept up for months. And now a. year has passed, and my customer's plate has not yet been returned; and I'm certain that ho will never again see either his chest, its contents, or any part of his stolen service of gold."