What are we to think of the security of Londoners
in London? If the story told by Mr. Rhodes, respectable solicitor of New- port, Isle of Wight, has even a grain of truth in it, we should say that the London of our day is as dangerous a place for the man visibly worth a ransom as the Abruzzi, or the Paris described by French romancists of the school of Sue. Mr. Rhodes, as the tale goes, was staying in town about a month ago, and left his hotel one evening to visit the Queen's Theatre, 'whence he did not return in person, but sent the next day a letter, stating that lie had been kidnapped, and was confined in a "loathsome den " near the river. After some doubt and delay a reward was offered, and paid, it is said, to the persons who had held Mr. Rhodes in captivity, and who released him robbed of all his money and almost stripped of his clothes. How did the kidnappers receive the money without risking capture by the police ? In Calabria there are methods of paying ransom to banditti which are hardly available in London, and until we know how this delicate operation was effected, we must hold our faith in this singular story in suspense.
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