TELL-TALE LIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 229, 27 September 1929, Page 8

TELL-TALE LIGHT.

POLICE GET SUSPICIOUS. SURPRISE FOR PLASTERER. CAPTURE AND DENOUEMENT. , With a single thought uppermost in his mind—that the job had to. go on until it was finished —a plasterer worked on the top floor of a city building the other night. Midnight came and •went. The plasterer went on with his task. _ ■ ' Down in the I street a vigilant constable had spied a tell-tale light. He had visions of burglars when he found the street door open. Silently and carefully he climbed the stairway, and when he reached the top he heard sounds in one of the rooms, indistinct sounds, a dull thud, the muttering of' a man's voice. Again the strange sounds came. Perhaps a safe was being opened on the other side of the door! The policeman knocked, and with the second tap on the door, the light went out! Wise in his generation, the policeman retraced his steps. He tried to enlist the help of a porter from a nearby hotel, but the latter was seeking neither notoriety nor fame. However, he compromised. Post haste he followed out some directions given and raced in search of a police sergeant at the' nearest city intersection. A sergeant came running up. the street, with the hotel porter trailing behind. They arrived to find that the constable had fortified himself with a miniature crowbar. Up the dark staircase the sergeant and policeman hurried, and as they reached the top, the door opened. A man appeared.' "Don't move. What's your big game, anyway?" asked the constable.. "I'm the proprietor here. I've been forking," came the reply. "You can't get away with that sort of stuff. I had that put across me last week," said the constable. With a grip on each arm, the ser geant and the constable led the man down the stairs. The "come-along-wjth- I me" idea was being carried into° effect the plasterer all the time protesting and trying to convince the policemen that he jvas quite legitimately on the .premises.

He appealed to liis custodians to take him across to the hotel, where the proprietor would soon prove that all was well. So, at half-past three in the morning a sleepy proprietor was aroused from his bed, and, blinking at the policemen and their capture, he explained. An annoyed plasterer and two disappointed policemen, parted. The clothes of the plasterer were dusty. He had left his imprint on his temporary companions.