El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-02-14
p DIPLOMATIC
ADVENTURE.
S3
How an Effort Was Made to OBJ
tain Possession of an Impor-
tant Letter and the Re
suit Thereof.


1 was wandering through the grounds
of London exhibition one evening
when a short. foreign looking man.
clothed in evening dress, approached
me and said in a low tone:
"Have l the honor of addressing Mr..
Godfrey VanceY'
He handed me a letter, saying alb
ruptly: "Be good enough to read this
letter. 1t will serve to introduce me-"
The communication was from Count
Antonio Delarocca of Milan, whom !
had aided some months before by car
rying off for him a famous Greek
statue from an English country house
1t was veIy brief and merely said:
Sir-This letter will introduce to you my good
friend, Herr Fritz Moskovitz, who is anxious for
you to undertake for him difficult mission
have told him that you the one man in Eng
land who hope to carry out such work with
success, and wishing you all good fortune, be-
ieve me- yours DELARoCcA
We left the exhibition grounds at
once. going to my abode.
''In the first place, my good sir" he
exclaimed. talking in an excited under
tone-"in the first place l must tell you
that this business is difficult almost to
the point of impossibility. Friday morn
ing next about 3 o'clock Count Rode
holtz will cause to be posted or post
with his own hand at the pillar box
facing his house in Percy street, May
fair, a certain letter addressed to the
Berlin foreign office. 1t is absolutely
vital to me and to the cause l represent
that that letter should never reach its
destination, and l am commissioned to
pay $4,000 to the man who will hand
that letter to me intact-eXactly as he
finds it,
els not a. IN. rather an unusual
hour for the dispatch of diplomatic
communications?
Most certainly it is. but the count
is not like other men. For the past
four years-in fact, since he first came
to the embassy-he has been in the
habit of posting this document between
3 and o'clock Friday mornings"
81 presume that tie obvious and old
fashioned method of obtaining the let
ter by force is out of the question.
Otherwise we might waylay the per-
son posting the letter, overpower him
and depart with the document"
'fUseless, quite useless, for it would
simply mean that the outrage would
be discovered almost Immediately, and
then the contents of the letter would
be telegraphed to Berlin, defeating our
plans most entirely. No; the essence
of the whole affair, my good sir, is that
the letter should be removed and hand
ed to me without the embassy people
having the slightest knowledge of the
fact
Next morning 1 went to Percy street,
Mayfair, to survey the ambassadors
house. Thirty-one Percy street, the
mansion in question, was a dull look
ing, gray abode exactly similar to the
other houses in the street. Facing the
house on the other side of the street
was a pillar boX-the receptacle, it
seemed, where the count was in the
habit Of posting his communications to
Berlin
Had the pillar box been a receptacle
easily shifted the matter would have
been as easy as smoking a cigarette,
for we should simply have had to di-
vert the policeman on the beat away
from the street by means of a fictitious
drunken disturbance. and then we
could have driven up in a van and
carted the box away. But must think
Of something else.
And then of a sudden there flashed
upon me an idea, coming whence l
knew not, but it seemed to me that a
voice spoke in my ear, and this is
what it said:
Substitute another pillar box on the
opposite side of the street. Placard
the genuine box with a notice saying
that it is temporarily disused and that
letters are to be posted opposite. Clear
the streets of the police by means OF
a row and wait with a van at the cor
ner of the street till the document is
posted. Swoop down, collar the box
and drive Off"
/ jumped into a cab and drove to a
certain hostelry in the East End where
j knew l should find plenty Of my pals,
who for a few dollars would throw
themselves into any adventure Of the
kind.
In a few words l conveyed to them
what 1 wanted done. Two of the men,
burly fellows, known as Jim Thursday
powers to Quarreling and getting run
in" at the corner Of Percy street, while
another two were TO keep watch at the
corners of the street. The remaining
man. Tom Rogers. was to assist me in
depositing the pillar box and removing
1t when the time came.
! Then a new difficulty arose. How
was the pillar box to be obtained?
"What is to be done about getting q