A THIEF’S INGENUITY.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 42, 24 May 1907, Page 7

A THIEF’S INGENUITY.

Among the many presents which Count Woronroff-Daschkow, Minister of the Imperial Household of the Czar of Russia, received from his imperial master was a magnificent coat lined with almost priceless silver-fox fur. The garment was however, not long in the Count's possession, and the manner in which it was lost is sufficiently amusing to be worthy of record. The Count had been attending some Court function at the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, and, at the conclusion thereof, on coming down into the hall where his chasseur was waiting with other servants and footmen bearing their master’s furs and wraps, he found, greatly to his disgust, that the entire left sleeve of the coat had been cut off. The chasseur was unable to account for the theft, which had evidently been l perpetrated by a clever thief in the crush of servants waiting in the entrance hall of the palace. On the folllowing morning the Count lost no time in sending the pelisse to the furrier, with orders to supply a new sleeve in place of the one that had been stolen. A couple of hours afterwards, and before the tailor had had time to find a piece of fox fur sufliciently fine to, match that of the cloak, a servaht dressed in the livery of the WoronzolT's entered the establishment bearing the missing sleeve. He stated that the police had just recovered it, and that he had been sent by the Count to have it sewn on quickly while he waited, as his Excellency wished to wear it the same afternoon. Within half-an-hour the furrier had completed the job and handed the pelisse to the footman, who straightway disappeared in the direction of the Woronzoff Palace. Later in the afternoon the furrier was astonished to see the Count’s valet enter the shop and ask for his master's coat, and only then did he realise that the liveried individual who had called upon him in the morning with the missing sleeve was a clever thief, who had first stolen the sleeve with a view to being subsequently able to obtain the entire coat, which has never been recovered to this day.