This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xiii the chronology of A great theft It is necessary to tell the story of what was undoubtedly one of the strangest and most audacious crimes recorded in the annals of crime with greater detail and at greater length than is ordinarily necessary. Le Flavier of the French police, who is surely the greatest living authority on the subject of modern crime, has likened Kate Westhanger's masterpiece (he does not refer to her, by the way) to the first of the Napoleonic campaigns against Italy and has published an elaborate treatise showing the points of resemblance which are not so far fetched as some of the critics, in their hasty review of this work, are justified in saying. Kirschner, a little quoted authority, but nevertheless a brilliant and talented philocriminologist, has said that it would be humanly possible to reduplicate such a crime and that at any rate it would be wholly impossible to excel the ingenuity which planned the strategics of the issue. At 8.30 on the night of May 14th the Charter Queen, eight thousand tons, commander T. Brown, came to her moorings in E-basin, No. 3 Quay of the Seahampton Docks. She carried a hundredand-twenty third class passengers, seventy-four second class and fifty-nine first class passengers, a general cargo and in her strong-room forty-four thousand, eight hundred pounds of bar gold. They were made up of four-hundred and fortyeight hundred-pound ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Rand Gold Extraction Company. The passengers were landed and despatched by special trains to London, preceded by another train carrying the mails. The mail train left at 9.27, the passenger at 9.42. By 10.17 the gold ingots had been landed, checked and conveyed to a waiting train where they were checked again...