Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-08-27
ROBBERY MADE EASY

red-handed in a famous caravansary had
adopted astonishingly simple method.
Without employing any of his usual
schemes as Il finished and expert Motel
sneak. he had cleaned up, il was authoT1-
tatively stated after his arrest, something
like $4,000 i'm the course of a few weeks
work. Big winner as 1T proved, his scheme
almost childish 1t was his plan sim
ply to watch his chance and steal a room
key from the hotel desk when the oppor-
tunity offered. Then he would ride up in
the elevator to the room called for by The
key number, open the door and get the
goods. That was all there was to it.
His plan hinged upon and was made easy
by the carelessness with which hotei keys
are handled, particularly by the men be
hind hotel desks.
A guest going out will toss his key upon
the hotel desk and it will lie there, at the
" no drifts along. until the clerk gets reauy
to place it in the box where 1t belongs.
Keys are often suffered thus to remain on
the counter for long half an hour Or
even more In some hotels where lax
methods prevail. Plenty of hotel clerks
never put the keys away as they come
along. but wait until a heap of them az
cumulates on the counter before d:stribut-
ing them in the boxes.
I've been wondering for good many
years why that trick wasn't worked" said
a Washington detective in commenting
upon the New York hotel sneak's simple
little plan. Il never heard of fellow be-
ing caught at it before, although, now 1
haven't the least doubt that it has often
been worked in cases where the victims
and the hotel people imagined that skele-
ton keys had been used.
For years past. in prowling around the
big hotels. I've wondered why the deuce
hotel sneak should go to the trouble of
fixing himself out with skeleton keys when
1t is such dead easy thing to stroll up to
almost any big hotel counter and pick up
a key or bunch of them for that matter.
and get away with the merchandise in that
simple fashion.
IF you possess the habit of noticing
Things. you ii observe that ninety-nne out
OF hundred persons never think of wait
Ing TO see the hotel clerk pick up the
tossed-down key and place 1t in the box.
Ihey Just drop the key the desk and
hurry away. without ever rejecting that
they're leaving the key exposed there for
anybody to pick up that feels Ike getting
INTO room that he isn't occupying
Inc clerks behind the counter are al
ways doing something or other. and it is
the usual thing for them to wait until a
bunch of keys are stacked up on the coun-
ter before they sort them out and put them
in the boxes where they belong Just you
stand near the desk of any big, lively ho-
tel and see if the keys thrown on the
counter are not suffered to remain there
long enough to enable any sneak who
zephyrS along to nail just the ones he
wants among them
Now a man with a packape of money or
iewelry to be deposited in the hotel safe
wouldn't slap it down on the counter in
that careless way and then run off before
he'd see the clerk pick it up. He'd place
the package in the clerks hands and wait
for his receipt.
And yet many hotel keys thus carelessly
cast upon hotel counters nowadays repre-
sent big value to prowling hotel sneaks for
the simple reason that, notwithstanding all
of the notices to the effect that hotels de-
cline to be responsible for valuabies left in
rooms people simply will not bother them
selves making their valuable gear up into
packages and depositing the stuff at the
desk
There's another thing about hotel keys
that ought to be changed. Hotel guests
are inadvertently carrying their room keys
with them all the time, and losing them
The room of the lost key is, consequently
thenceforward at the mercy of whoever
happens to pick up the lost key In case
the finder is a crook.
And yet. instead of changing the locks
on the doors the keys of which are lost
most hotels simply provide the doors with
other working keys. and let it go al that
Any time. then, that the finder of the lost
key wants to loot that room all that he has
to do is to see that the substituted key is
in the hotels key box and then ride up to
the room and go far as he likes with
the trunk and bureau valuables.
"A few years ago, in Philadelphia, a fell
low was arrested VINO made a business of
getting hold of hotel keys His scheme in
yolved preliminary campaign of register
ing at swell hotels in different cities before
he got down to actual work.
He'd take a swell room or rooms at a
hotel just for day or SO. pay his bill and
go away, carrying the key with him. as If
inadvertently, and move along to another
swagger hotel, repeating the performance
and annexins another key. Then he'd go
back over his route, the rooms of which
he possessed the keys having meanwhile
filed up with pay-ore folks-had to be the
moneyed kind to be able to afford such rich
apartments
Then the sneak would only have to wait
until the occupants of the rooms of which
he had the keys went out-he could tell
when they We're out by seeing their keys in
their numbered boxes-and then he'd slip
up to the rooms and loot them at his leis-
ure.
IF the hotels would change the lock on
a door as soon a key is lost or taken
away no such scheme, of course, could pos
sibly be worked"