AN AFFABLE STRANGER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20451, 4 July 1928, Page 2

AN AFFABLE STRANGER.

ENTRUSTED WITH £SO NOTE. NIAGARA PASSENGER’S LOSS. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, July 3. “No trouble at all. I will just hop in here and get it changed for you. I am a very old friend of the Ann. X know them well.” This was part of a conversation which took place outside a well-known warehouse in the city yesterday'. One of the Niagara’s passengers came ashore with a £SO note in his possession and wanted it changed. He discussed the matter with an affable stranger in Queen street, and the latter, on the pretext of getting the note changed, took him to a warehouse in a nearby street. The man off the Niagara waited long and patiently on the front doorstep. In the meantime the stranger was making frantic efforts to find an exit from the back of the warehouse which abuts on to a back lane. He went through the warehouse and into the basement from which there was no exit except through a double door that was barred and bolted. He asked the storeman to open the door for him, and on being told that it could not be done asked the way out. Thinking he was a person with a legitimate reason for being in the warehouse and that he had lost his way' the storeman directed him to the back exit, one flight above; and, to use the latter’s expression, “ be turned on his heel and went upstairs like one thing. And I told him how to get out while the other poor fellow was waiting for his £SO. Becoming perturbed, the owner of the note W'ent inside the building and asked for the cashier, and inquired for the man who had cashed his £SO note. Then he learned that he had gone through the building, as subsequent. inquiries proved, and out of the back door into another street. Feeling sad and much wiser the Niagara passenger placed the matter in the hands of the police.