A BURGLAR’S INGENUITY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8865, 16 July 1907, Page 4

A BURGLAR’S INGENUITY.

Cash and securities to the value of £-1000 were stolen in Antwerp , one night a few weeks ago by a burglar who displayed the most amazing ingenuity in /gaining access to a safe and ransacking its contents. ■ The victims were a firm of stockbrokers,” Messrs Glabboek and Van Laet, whose offices form part _ of-the Terminus Hotel building, in the Rue Pelican. r , . One evening a traveller arrived ac the hotel, and signed his name as Lagasse. He insisted on having a front room, and secured one over (he stockbrokers’ office. He asked for plenty of water, as he wished to have a oath. He then went out, returning soon after with valises which are now known to have contained carefully-packed carboys of oxygen. ■When the hotel was quiet he stopped the keyholes of the adjoining rooms, removed his bed, cut the carpet, drilled holes in the flooring, sawed through the planks, and broke the palster ceiling of the room below, having previously placed an inverted umbrella to prevent the plaster falling to the floor. - Next, he desended through the hole into’the office by a rope-ladder screwed to the bedroom door, lie carefully covered all apertures in the office with blankets bought the evening, and erected a kind or screen round the safe. Pouring his bath water on a quantity of calium carbide, he made acetylene gas, and by burning it with oxygen, produced such intense heat that he soon melted the steel of the safe and the lock yielded. The safe was doubly fastened, so that he was obliged to repeat this part of his work. He then emptied the safe and thoroughly ransacked the whole office. , . i • Returning to the bedroom by his rope ladder, he replaced the bed and the carpet, set all in Order, and departed at live o’clock in the morning with only a small hand-bag, telling the hotel porter that he was making an excursion and would return at mid-day. ■ No sound of his night’s work was heard, and it was only when the employees came to open the office that burglary was discovered. The office was a scene of the wildest confusion. The burglar had left -everything behind—acetylene machine, oxygen carboys, electric lamps, gloves, smoked spectacles and other articles. Two Germans who arrived at the same time as “Lagasse,” and occupied a room over his, are believed to have been his accomplices. They are thought to be members of a gang of international thieves.