A CLEVER CAPTURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10597, 18 February 1896, Page 7

A CLEVER CAPTURE.

A LEVANTER ARRESTED AT THE i HEADS. Some five months have elapsed sines the j public learnt that aa information had been laid j charging Frederick T. Home, well known iv local sporting circles and lata secretary of the. Dunedin Finance, Loan, and Agency Com-, pany, with embezzling funds of that institution, and the public also learntthat Home had disappeared. With that readiness to censure the authorities that, is so often displayed, people blamed the police for a time for having, aa they thought, allowed the accused to Blip through their hands and to escape from the colony to a place, wlisoce it would not be worth while to bring J him back, and the incident was then forgotten. If; however, the general public ceased to think or to tallc about the matter, that was not the i case !vHh the police, who all along entertained i the conviction that Hotoe had not escaped, anil I for some time have known that he was ly;ug i low somewhere in the bush in thß neighbour- j hood of Waitati. The departure of inter- j colonial and foreign vesjela hao always besn i clo3siy watched, but up to last week without ! any tangible result. I

On the Ist inst. the barque Brier Holme,laden with v?oo!, was to leave Port Chalmers for London, and the police having good raasyn to suspect that Home would endeavour to escape by her laid their plans accordingly. Chief Detective O'Connorand Constable Glecson, proceeding to Port Chalmers on Friday evening, remained on the look out there all night, and the outcome of their vigil was the strengthening of their suspicions that the man whom the? "wanted" would attempt to levant by She. Brier Holme. At 6 o'clock on Saturday morning thoy made a search of that vessel, audio the coarse of. it they come across a box which,' addressed to the captain, they believed to belong to Home. -The captain admitted to the police officers that ho had received from a Dnuedin citizen a sum of £35 in payment for the passage to London of a man named " Christian Andersen," and the crew, on being questioned, stated that they had gathered from the captain that they were to have a passenger on board, bat none of them had seen him. The person who had paid the money for "Andersen's" passage was among those who saw Detective O'Connor on'tho barque, and the latter, fearing that Home might from that source get a hint a? to what had happened, had the movements of the person in question '.'shadowed." The detective, determined if possible to leave nothing to chance, wired to Inspector Pardf a request that Mounted-constable Boddam might be Eeivt down the Peninsula to Taiaroa Heads, and ho himself despatched two constables to the north head, bo that there might be officers of police on each side of the entrance of the harbonr at the time at which the Brier Holme was being towed out.

About 2 p.m. the barque cast off from Fort Chalmers, in tow of the Koputai. A pilo'j wan oa board, and so also wers Detective O'Connor and Sergeant Geerin. Besides these tbe person who had paid "Anderson's" passage money and two or three residents of Danedin, who were supposed to be sympathisers with Homo, also took advantage of the fact that the Bciec Holme was going out in order to have a breath of sea air. When the vessel was about half way down to the head* a waterman's boat was palled oat to her by two men, one of whom was recognised to ba Home, and on reaching the bsrque they grabbed at a rope ladder which was hanging down her aide but missed it. Detective O'Connor appealed to the pilot to assist Homo on to the Brier Holme, and a rope thrown to them by the latter was caught by the occupants of the boat; which was then towed along by tbat means. The detective meanwhile, fearing that the supposed symoathisera with Home would give him the "office" ai to there being police o board waiting for him, cautioned them that any intervention on their part between him and the accused would render them liable to prosecution. Home was at this time tendered very littls assistance by the officers and crew of the vessel, and when he realised afterwards, »s he has rio doubt realised, that in doing nothing to help him on board they were placing obstacles in the way of the police he will have recognißed that they were thus trying to do him a good tarn. However, the boat was dragged on for about two miles, the occupants banging on to the ropa which had been thrown out to them. The tale of these two men in a boat, told by one of them, would probably be interesting, especially if the reflections of a certain occupant were faithfully presented. Eventually, as the vessel approached the heads, the pilot boat, which was to take off the pilot, put out ta her and came alongside, the cccv? Seizing hold of the barque's rope ladder. From this point the police officers wera favoured by circumstances. The waterman's boat was hauled alongside the pilot boat, and Home stepped from the former into the latter, but he had nasooner done that than Detective O'Connor descended the rope ladder into tha pilot boat, Sergeant Geerin following him, and there arrested their man. Even had Home not been captured in that way, but had received warning of the presenca of police on the barque,' and made his way back to land, he could not have failed falling into the hands of officers of justice, for Detective O'Connor, as he was sitting beside him in the boat, saw Constable Boddam on the beach on his right-hand side and the two other constables on that on his left-hand side. The police remained in thß pilot boßt with their prisoner and were of course carried out to sea until the tug had given the Brier Holme a fair offing. . Beforo tbat the supposed lympathiaers also loft tho barque for the pilot boat, and when tho homeward bound vessel cat adrift the whole lot of them—police, prisoner, and others—were transferred to the tug. The attitude of practical hostility shown on board the vessel towards the police was emphasised when tha Brier Holme c»st «way, the crew giving thsee groans for them, while cheering the other occupants of the pilot boat, who reciprocated tha compliment. As a matter of fact, before the pilot boat came alongside the barqne, a bottle into which a paper had been thrust— containing doubtless a message for Horne —was thrown towards the waterman's boat from tha window of the captain's cabin on the Brief Holme, but it missed its mark and foil into the harbour. Home was brought np to Dnnedin on Saturday evening and lodged in the cells at the police station. Tha information laid against him charges him with embezzling £100 of the funds of the Dunedin Loan, Finance, and Agency Company. He bad no money on him when arrested, but it is surmised that some had been entrusted to the captain to be handed to him on board. The box, which is supposed to be his, was carried sway in the Brier Holme. Horns bas since been committed for trial on the following charges:—For embezzling on August 14, 1895, £100; on June 11, £100 ; on November 2, 1894, £46 5» ; on November .13, 1894, £54 9s 2d. Bail has been fired in amounts aggregating £1370—accused in £570 and cis approved mreties In £800. '. .'