A PUZZLE IN JEWEL ROBBERIES.
NOTHING in crime is commoner than imitation, and it would not be astonishing if it turned out that the extraordinary robbery of State jewels at Dublin Castle, of
which the first news was heard on Monday, had been suggested by the singularly successful theft of the Ascot Gold Cup three weeks ago. Both were crimes of daring coolness. The Ascot
Cup was carried off in broad daylight under the very nose of a policeman specially set to watch over the table on which it was standing with the other trophies of the race-meeting. The thief has not been discovered, and nothing more has been heard of the Cup, which presumably was melted down as quickly as possible. But the Dublin theft was apparently even a bolder piece of stealing. It may prove, indeed, to be the most remarkable robbery of jewels since those topsy-tnrvy days when Thomas Blood half killed the attendant guarding the jewels in the Tower, carried off the crown and orb, was caught, and enjoyed for the rest of his life the special kingly favour of Charles II.
The actual circumstances of the Dublin theft are obscure. The accounts sent by the correspondents of the various papers differ widely from one another, and the "official statement " issued by the Dublin Metropolitan Police does not greatly help to reconstruct the story. The facts which are certain are that a robbery has been committed, and that jewels of the Order of St. Patrick, valued at many thousands of pounds, are now missing. These are a diamond star of the Grand Master of the Order, a diamond badge of the Grand Master, and five collars.of Knights Companions of the Order. No one knows when they were taken, nor does the " official statement" give any information as to the place from which they were removed by the thief. The newspaper accounts are confusing. According to one correspondent, the jewels were kept in an immense safe in a strong-room built into the solid masonry of the Bermingham Tower of the castle. According to another, the jewels were not kept in the Bermingham but in the Bedford Tower, which is in quite a different part of the castle. A third account is that they were not kept in a strong-room at all, but in a public office open to visitors. Any one of these accounts would fit in with the ingeniously worded police "official statement," naturally made as vague, and perhaps as misleading, as possible. It is amusing, indeed, to take the "official statement" by itself, apart from the subsidiary accounts of the newspaper correspondents, and to observe to what proficiency in the graceful art of saying nothing in many words the true detective spirit may lead. "About 2.30 p.m. on the 6th inst.," you are informed, "an official connected with the office of arms, Dublin Castle, had occasion to put some article into a safe in which the State jewels belonging to the Order of St. Patrick had been kept." Here, as writers of local guide-books are fond of putting it, we may pause for a moment. "Had been kept" is the diffi- culty. Why not "are kept" P They have not all been stolen. To leave that point for the present, however, we read, con- tinuing : " but on trying to unlock the door he discovered that it bad been previously unlocked, and on testing the lever the door readily opened." Here, again, "had been previously unlocked" is puzzling. Does the writer mean "was unlocked already " ? That would be the more natural form of expres- sion, but, of course, it does not mean the same thing. Every safe in the kingdom in working order, after all, has been "previously unlocked." But that point becomes a small one
in comparison with another. This is that in the "official statement" there is, as a fact, no statement whatever that anything which ought to have been in the safe was found to be missing. True, there is appended a description of "the articles stolen," but there is nothing to connect them with the safe. Here is the remainder of the "official statement ":-- " The last time on which this safe is known to have been opened was on June 11th last, when the jewels were inspected and found to be then correct, and there appears to be no doubt but that the door was locked when the inspection was over. There is no mark on the safe to indicate that any violence was used to open it, nor is there any indication to show that access to the building was obtained otherwise than by regular means." What building, and what were the regular means ? But there the statement ends.
Observe that there is no mention of even a theory that the jewels described as stolen were taken out of the safe. Unless you begin with the notion at the back of your head that jewels have been stolen out of a locked safe, you need never come to that conclusion at all. What is there in the " official statement" which would run counter to the following (of course wholly imaginary) narrative ? The jewels were inspected, as the statement observes, on June 11th. To be inspected they were taken out of the safe. But they were not put back. Indeed, the safe was emptied of everything it con- tained. After being emptied it was locked; but as the lock turned noisily and seemed rusty, it was unlocked again, and left unlocked. The jewels were then put away in what was thought to be a perfectly safe place, but, unfortunately, when they were again inspected on July 6th, some of them were found to be missing. Investigations showed that they had been stolen. Every effort was made to keep the matter quiet, in order to run the best chance of catching the thief ; but a hint of what had happened somehow leaked out, and, of course, the first idea crossing the mind of an outsider hearing that State jewels had been stolen would be that a safe had been broken into. The newspaper correspondents in turn jumped at the idea of a safe burgled under the noses of the police ; and the police, hard at work on the real track, thought it best to leave the public guessing away, as they bad begun, at the difficulties in the way of the audacious thief.
We are, of course, writing ironically. The jewels are not definitely stated by the police to have been removed from the safe because the fact is so horribly patent as to seem to them not to need stating. We have only pulled the official com- munication to pieces because it is an interesting instance of the withholding of what any detective entrusted with the unravelling of the tangled skein would regard as the absolutely essential facts of the case,—namely, that the jewels were for certain locked up in the safe on June 11th, and that they were believed by the authorities to be in the safe when the " official connected with the office " went to open it on July 6th. But a detective would want to know a great
deal more than that. He would want to know, for one thing, where the key of the safe had been kept during the days which elapsed between June 11th and July 6th. The theory has been started that the safe was opened by a duplicate key ; but
there would be no need for a duplicate for any one who could get at the original. Next, he would most certainly want to know where the safe was kept. Was it in a room which only those who were connected with the castle could enter, or could a casual visitor reach it ? If the latter was the case, might it not be possible that the safe had been accidentally left unlocked ? Nearly every man's memory deserts Lim at intervals ; there is hardly one of us who cannot recollect having been positive that he has carried out this or that small but important piece of routine, and then finding out that, as a fact, inexplicably but undoubtedly, he has not done so. If the safe had been left unlocked by an official, that would simplify the explanation of what followed. For if the safe was
unlocked by a burglar, why should he not lock it up again? He would stand less chance of immediate detection if he
locked it again, for no suspicion would be aroused until the articles stolen were actually wanted. But if the safe was left open, the explanation is simplicity itself. Some visitor, or perhaps some person with the deliberate purpose of robbing when and where he could, casually pulled the handle of the safe as he passed, and to his amazement, perhaps to his delight, found it open. He took what he could take quickly,
and shut the door. Or it would be easy to develop more fandful theories. Might not the robbery, or removal of the jewels, be the work of a somnambulist ? Such robberies are some of the hardest of all to trace, for the waking man has no knowledge of what he has done. But that question, like the rest, leads back to the fundamental point,—Where was the safe situated ? The correspondents differ; the officials do not say. They know, of course, but have hitherto unaccountably deprived themselves of the assistance of the amateur detectives by withholding their knowledge. Perhaps before these lines are in print there will have been issued another "official statement."
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