A TEUTON SHERLOCK HOLMES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9680, 3 January 1910, Page 4

A TEUTON SHERLOCK HOLMES.

Tha cable news of the past month or so has kept us posted in details of the German dockyard scandals at Kiel. Plunder valuei at close upon half a million sterling is alleged to have been secured during the last ten years, contractors and dockyard officials being implicated in the frauds. Credit for the exposure is due to Germany's Sherlock Holm&s, Herr Wannowski, a brilliant young Berlin detective who started life disastrously as a gentleman farmer, and, who, in 1900, found his vocation in the police force. His physical characteristics tally exactly with those of the, eminent detectives of fiction. Ha Is of medium build, broad-shouldered, and clean-shaven. A particularly keen and piercing pair of steel-blue eyes (always theirs!) are his—eyes which have more than once, so the story goes, extracted confessions from quailing malefactors. So far, however, no Teuton Dr Watson has arisen to chronicle his triumphs of deduction for the delectation of the youth of the Fatherland; but seeing that Herr Watinowski is still very young in the profession which he so conspicuously adorns, it is becoming, perhaps, that this pleasing and probably profitable, task should be deferred until his exploits are sufficiently numerous to adorn the pages of at least a couple of volumes. Hen" Wannowski won his spurs in 1903 by unravelling a particularly knotty railway mystery. Then he, brought the perpetrator of< a specially brutal murder to book, and a few months later he was the means of suppressing outrages of the •'"Jack the Ripper'' type which held Berlin in a state of terror for weeks. Finally he was commissioned to elicit the source 'of dockyard "graft" at Kiel which had perplexed and baffled the Admiralty authorities for years. His superior officers at Berlin sent him to Hamburg one night without orders, except to call next morning at the Hamburg post office for a letter which would contain his instructions. They were to the effect that he was to "nose about" Hamburg among material contractors, and then proceed to Kiel, where he was to worm himself into the confidence of suspected dockyard officials and employees. The arrest and indictj ment of the principals in the affair and their respective accomplices speedily followed, and the whole swindle is now in process of being thoroughly exposed. Hitherto Germany has had no detectives of national renown, and naturally Herr Wannowski is highly regarded in his own country. A few m rrln ago he was decorated wit'i Prussian Order of the.'Red E i ; :h by Ihn Uai ser, and although hj lias received many tempting olfers to go into private practice, he in proof against all blandishment?, preferring to remain loyal to his' second love, end* continue in xhe service of th ; Royal Police Administration ai itio m\v salary with which Prussian officials of all clasess must contsnt themselves.