IN A DEN OF THIEVES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 428, 6 January 1912, Page 7

IN A DEN OF THIEVES.

In the East End of London a gang of foreign burglars had headquarters in the cellar of a shoemaker's shop. The police desired to entrap the entire band, which one of their paid agents managed cleverly to join. A A raid on a mansion in Essex was being plotted when, for some reason or other, the men grew suspicious of their newest comrada. On? afternoon the spy arrived to attend the meeting, passed through the shop unnoticed, and found hime/ If the firstcomer in the cellar. Then hs heard voices, his own name mentioned, and as two men came down the ladder the ominous words reached him : "Stephen must stab him !" At once the spy, darting across the cellar, dropped down, lying against the wall behind a heap of coal. And there he heard the others. planning how he was to be killed. A marvellous coincidence, however, saved him. The coal-plate above his head was raised, and from the pavement in the street a sack of coke that had been ordered was emptied down, completely covering him. Then more men arrived, but though a targe lamp was lighted, the prospective victim, half smothered only a few feet away, was not discovered. And the shoemaker, who, with a sharp knife, was also to have been the murderer, dropped in a swoon as, when all had gone away, a black apparition of the man who was to have been killed passed out through *he shop.