A BURGLAR HUNT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2461, 27 March 1909, Page 11 (Supplement)

A BURGLAR HUNT.

AN INTERESTING JUMBLE. Considering the number of nervous people there are in tho world, and the compromising situations in which the most innocent people sometimes find themselves landed, it is surprising how rare are comedies of burglar hunts without burglars. Such a one happened the other day in a London suburb. At three one morning a maidservant in the house of a well-to-do City man was aroused by an alarm clock. Thinking it was six, the girl rose, dressed herself , and went downstairs to light the fire. The master of the house, hearing the sound of movement belowrang a bell to summon the servant. The latter assumed that the milkman had called and wont to the dom’, which she opened with much drawing of bolts and chains. The noise now thoroughly alarmed the master, who jumped to tho conclusion that burglars were preparing to leave by the door. He forthwith sprang to the window and blew a police whistle Now it so happened that the police ot the locality were keeping a special lookout for burglars, and the roads wore patrolled by plain-clothes men with a view to catching them. One of these men, Ford by name, heard the whistle, and immediately made for the house. A gardener living in a house next dom, also aroused by the whistle, tiicd . open a door in the wall, hut found locked. The burglars had done t ns, hi thought, so he promptly scaled the a all and dropped—ini lo the anns of trie vealous ° Ford. So far tho affair had been comedy ;-now it became tragedy. In the darkness the detective naturally thought lie had caught a burglar, and the gardener naturally thought his captor was a law-broalcer acting on the well-known principle that the best defence is attack. There was a welter of blows and shouts, which brought a third man on the scene,. an athlete armed with an Alpine ico-pick. He recognised tho gardener, and .jumped to the rescue with a blow which nearl> finished the career of Detective hold, who by this time' had hammered Ins supposed burglar into submission. Fortunatelv tho blow was delivered with the side of the pick. A number of police then arrived on the scene, am straightened matters out. Ford had to go to hospital, but before he went he shook hands with the man who had hit him and said he bofe hint no J.l.