The Halifax Comet. — 1893-09-16 (Halifax, West Yorkshire, England)

OOO. In March, 1863, Risk Allah and Readly were staying together at an hotel at Antwerp, where Readly became unwell. The only other persons at the hotel at the time were a sea captain and his wife, who left okthe 30th. At three o'clock that morning Badly rang his bell, and the porter was asked' to fetch .Risk Allah. They together found the young man reclining against his bed, and baying induced him to lie down they left. The chambermaid said, on coming down at seven in the morning, she peeped through the keyhole and saw Readly fast asleep and breathing -easily. Half an hour later Risk Allah went -down, had breakfast, and paced outside the hotel. He then went up to his stepson's room, knocked, and, getting no answer, sent for two servants. They found the door locked, but gained acmes by another door, when they noticed that an article of furniture usually placed against this private door had been removed. :13, was found bathed in blood, with a gunshot wound on the left side of the neck. A discharged gun that had been carried into the room on a previous occasion by Allah lay on the floor. Allah picked it IN), and apostrophised it: "Wicked gun! It is you who are the cause of this." At the same time he picked up a piece of piper bearing the words "I have done it." He called the attention of the servants to the paper, saying, "See, the poor fellow says he has done it -himself." He then approached the bed, and, pulling down the coverlet, took hold of one of the dead man's arms. Circumstances looked so suspicious against Risk Allah that he was arrested; but the same day the coi.rt liberated him, deciding that Beadly had committed suicide. • And now came the strange part of the story. Risk Allah, while in Paris, before the tragedy, had dropped a pocket-book containing a blank cheque-book. Two cheques obtained from this cheque-book were forged and presented at a Paris bank by a man named Osman. The Paris police, in the course of their inquiries, found that Risk Allah and, Osman were connected in a series of frauds, and that Osman was a notorious and convicted thief, and that, in fact, there , were grave reasons for believing that Risk Allah was not quite the innocent he looked. Under Belgian law a person can be re- I examined on a charge on which he has 1 already been acquitted, and Risk Allah was I put on his trial for the murder of his step son. The chief points againsthim were the fact that he would profit by the lad's death, the apparent similarity of th.s handwriting on the alleged confession to that of the prisoner, and, further, the improbability of 11,dly having shot .himself and then put both hands beneath the coverlet. The trial lasted six days, and the president put sixty questions to the jury, asking for a special finding on each. The result was an acquittal. The case was practically reheard in England a few months later. The Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph had taken a very partial view of the business, and in writing his descriptions had all along assumed the guilt of Risk Allah. On the completion of the Brussels trial the Telegraph had a very severe article suggesting that there had been a gross miscarriage of justice. Risk Allah brought an action for libel against the proprietor of the Telegraph. The case occupied. a week, and some fresh interesting details respecting the  —so,  character of Allah and Osman were elicited, but the jury found for the Turk and gave him £960 as compensation. The summer of 1876 produced a sensation of a perplexing and mysterious character; and, despite the:r!ported-" confession" which came from a Belgian prison only a few weeks since, the fate of the stolen Gainsborough cannot be said to be cleared up. In May, 1876, Messrs. Christie, the great art auctioneers, dispersed the celebrated Wynn Ellis collection. Among the art treasures was a celebrated portrait of the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire by Gainsborough. Mesas. Agnew bought it for the unprea, dentedly high price of ten thousand guineas. Apart from any other consideration, the fact that so large a sum had been paid for the picture would have caused it to be talked about. Consequently, when the picture was exhibited in Messrs. Agnew's gallery in Bond Street, all London went to see it.  Lady readers will, perhaps, recall the period ty means of the celebrated and picturesve Duchess of Gainsborough hats, which thispainting made fashionable for a season. The picture was bought on May 6. On the morning of the 26th, on the attendant opening the gallery, it was found that the picture had been neatly cut out of its frame and taken away. The sensation was tremendouk. Within a week all civilisation talked of nothing else. The "Missing Duchess" formed the subject of countless stories, jokes, and musio-hall choruses, while, in the meantime, engraved teproductious of the picture were in every shop-window. Since the birth of the engraver's art no picture was so widely circulated in so brief a time. It is estimated that, by the sale of these copies alone, Mr. Agnew made a fortune, and this was taken as the groundwork for a base suggestion that the person best qualified to find the picture was the loser of it. • "  Early this year the Belgian police captured and Convicted one Raymond Worth, the most daring.and accomplished wholesale thief in the world. Originally a man before the mast in an American ship, Worth planned and successfully carried out a sixty-thousand pound bond robbery in the United States. On the, strength of that he came to Europe, and for years has been the head-centre and receiver - general to all the bond au a bank robbers of Christendom. Up till Christmas last he was residing in Piccadilly, where his suite of bachelor rooms were famous among connossieurs as a dream of luxury and art. His dress, horses, women, and other luxuries, even to his ties and collars, were the envy and admiration of the fast set among whom he passed as a wealthy yo4ng bachelnr. His identity with the leader of the great continental gang of mail robbers came as a thunderclap to his acquaintances. Worth is now undergoing a long term in a Belgian gaol, and the other week he assured a French journalist who had interviewed him that he was the perpetrator of the great Bond Street theft. Ele tried hard to negotiate with Mr. Agnew for the ransom of the picture, but that gentleman refused to rise to the bait, so the picture becoming a source of danger he destroyed it. At least, tat is his story. There are those who still prefer to believe that the missing "Duchess" i safely hidden behindthe canvas of some less valuable painting, and that she will reappear before the period of copyright expires.  . •