A MILLION-TO-ONE CHANCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23595, 2 March 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

A MILLION-TO-ONE CHANCE

Luck Has Played ' In Preventing "Perfect Cr

By CHARL.ES KINGSTON

ROGUES have their Special misfortunes, no less pronounced and varied than those which afflict honest men. "A fair cop!" exclaims the prisoner when, as in the case of a notorious London confidence trickster, he tried his wiles on a stoutish, placid-looking stranger ° n 'y to discover that the intended victim was Superintendent Melville of Scotland Yard.

BUT this is not to be compared with the misadventure of a Prussian lady of rank who, in pre-Great War days, attempted to restore her sinking fortunes by indulging in what she could have termed amateur stealing. She was a guest at one of those extravagant entertainments in St. Petersburg when she observed her 1 4ft ess, a cousin of the Tsar, place on a table a gold watch embellished with diamonds, The company was chattering or drinking; and there were no servants present. With a series of quick movements she was at the table, had snatched the watch up and, as she moved away, concealed it in her hair, which was coiffure:! in the fashion of the day to resemble a jloaf. Then she sat down at the card table, where she had been losing steadily since ten o'clock.

amazement when the hostess walked up to her. " How kind of you, princess," she said, sweetly, "to think of taking care of my watch. Thank you." She held out her hand, and the trembling woman recovered the watch from her hair and handed it over. The thief was arrested before she reached her own house and the next day was pardoned by the Tsar on condition that she returned to her native country, Prussia, immediately. Less glamorous, perhaps, but not Jess dramatic, was the experience of an expert London jewel thief who brought oil' the coup of a lifetime in a country house near Dover and met his Waterloo outside Waterloo station when a woman falsely accused him of having stolen her purse. After entering the country house, he tramped ten miles across the Weald of Kent before catching a train to London. Ho arrived confident, unsuspected and with twenty thousand pounds' worth of diamonds m his pockets. When he reached his usual haunts near Waterloo station he was the happiest man in the world.

Dangerous Plunder Very soon tlio Princess Nicolinn Romanoff misled her watch, and as it had cost her about a thousand pounds she was distressed. She did not, however, create a scone. Her guests were too important and tro influential to be lightly insulted, anc. so she beckoned to her brother and confided in him. "I want you to stand near the door and just wait," she whispered. "Someone in the room now stole the watch, and whoever' it is we shall know in about for at midday and midnight, the watch plays the Russian National Anthem. The musical box inside it was/an ingenious invention of the watchmaker."

Boomerang Crime He was strolling past a bus stop when an elderly woman suddenly uttered a scream which brought him to a halt. "That man's got my purse." she cried, and the innocent thief was protesting against the slur on his character when the stately approach of a policeman caused lilin to luse his nerve. Hut in the dash for safety he was outwitted by a newsagent who tripped him up. and in double quick time the falsely-accused prisoner was at tinstation, and undergoing the ordeal of the search. This was the reason why the, inspector laughingly stopped the woman's apologies when she called to explain how stupidly she had behaved in thinking she had lost her purse, when all the time it had been on the sittingroom table at home. An English murderer on trial at the Old Bailey would probably have obtained a verdict of not guilty but for the evidence of a smart barmaid who

Before the'clock in the salon pointed to twelve, silence had fallen on' the company, broken only by an occasional exclamation of triumph or annoyance from the card-players, but it happened that there was a complete pause when suddenly the, Russian National Anthem, the strains clear and unmistakable, sounded from the hair of the Princess Waldstein. -Everybody was staring in

had seen him once only in her life and then for about a minute. When she admitted this to counsel for the defence, the lawyer thought he had a sure and certain method of discrediting her. "You saw the prisoner only once and that was on a Bank Holiday?" "Yes. sir." "How many persons do you serve on a Bank Holiday?" "Ours is the largest public-house, I think, in South London." she said, quietly, "and" in the ordinary way we serve five or six hundred on an average day. A Hank Holiday would treble the number." "Then," said counsel with a rising note of triumph in his voice, "011 this particular Hank Holiday you must have served several scores of customers yourself. Now be goorl enough to inform his lordship and the jury why you are so positive in identifying a man you saw for a minute or less on the busiest day in your year?" "Because out of all the men who ordered drinks, he was the only one who left without touching his," was the devastating reply.