AN OBLIGING STRANGER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3814, 5 July 1928, Page 3

AN OBLIGING STRANGER.

STORY OF A £SO NOTE. Auckland, July 3. “No trouble at all; I’ll just hop in here and get it changed for you. I’m a very old friend of the firm; I know them well.” This was part of a conversation which took place outside a wellknown warehouse in the city. One of the Niagara’s passengers came ashore with a £SO note in his possession, and wanted it changed. He discussed the matter with an affable stranger in Queen street, who later, on the pretext of getting the note changed, took him to a warehouse in a nearby street. The man off the Niagara waited long and patiently on the front doorstep. In the meantime the stranger was making frantic efforts to find an exit from the back of the warehouse which abuts on to a back lane. He went through the warehouse and into the basement, from which there was no exit, except through a double door that was barred and locked. Tie asked the storeman to open the door for him, and on being told it couldn’t be done, asked the way out. Thinking he was a person with a legitimate reason for being in the warehouse, and that he had lost his way, the storeman directed him to a back exit one flight above, and to use the latter’s expression, “he turned on his heel and went up the stairs like one thing, and I told him how to get out, while the other poor fellow was waiting for his fifty.” Becoming perturbed, the owner of the note went inside the building, asked for the cashier, and inquired for the man who had cashed his £SO note. Then he learned he had gone through the building, and, as subsequent inquiries proved, out of the back door into another street.

Feeling sad, and much wiser, the Niagara passenger placed the matter in the hands of the police.