A DETECTIVE STORY.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 429, 4 August 1904, Page 2

A DETECTIVE STORY.

In Birmingham recently (writes * Looker-On') an elderly man with his wife lives with his Bpiuater sister. The man very recently had occasion to draw a considerable sum of money from a society, and, wishing to have a night's enjoyment, determined, with his wife, to visit the theatre, leaving the sister at home on account of h6r Buffering from neuralgia. After supper she heard noises at the back door, and on going into the scullery and looking out perceived a man's hand thrust through a small opening in the wall, endeavouring to unloox. the door. She quickly returned to the sitting-room, heated the poker, and went out, to flad the hand still there f ambling. She drew the bot poker acroßs the hand, and then ran back through the house and out at the front door, to the next door neigh, hour's, when, to her amazement, she saw her neighbour bathing his hand in cold water, the inference being obvious. He has since been told that one or the other must leave the neighbourhood, and he prefers to do so. r

IN A THIBD-CLASS RAILWAY CAEBIAGE,

The foilowmg amusing dialogue took place a short time back, which might be a warning to outspoken people. Just at> a train was about to start out of Manchester a gentleman sprang into a second-class carriage and exclaimed,' I nearly missed it through that fool of a booking-clerk refusing to pass a shilling with a hole in it. Just as the words left his mouth in tumbled two breathless gentlemen, who said in a loud voice, 'lt was a narrow escape, and all through that idiot who was arguing with the booking-clerk over a shilling with a hole in it. 'Would you know the idiot again if you saw him ?' innocently asked the culprit. 'No, indeed, we shouldn't,' ?&id one of them, 1 Oh, well, allow me to introduce mvaelf. I'm that idiot I' Collapse of both the gents, and loud laughter from the her nassengtre.

IA GOOD HAUL. A party of American students, insect hunting in Arizona, have returned with 15.000 specimens, all pinned and labelled, of which some 100 are new to science, Of these 5.430 are beetles, 4,600 are flies, 1,926 are butterflies and moths, and the rest include bees and many varieties of wasps. The butteriies and moths were collected at night by spreading on a tree near the camp a mixture of beet and molasses