September 12,—1935-A Little Drama From Real Life in a Montreal Restaurant
The Washington Daily News—Thursday—September 12,—1935
A Little Drama From Real Life in a Montreal Restaurant
By ERNIE PYLE
MONTREAL — It happened in a big Montreal restaurant, in the evening. There were at least a hundred people dining, and the overtones of conversation and rattling dishes were such that you couldn’t hear much.
The first thing was when the woman jumped up and ran over to the cashier’s cage. She was beyond middle age, small and saucy, and she looked as tho she wouldn’t be afraid of a wildcat. She had on a long white linen coat, she wore glasses, and a brown straw hat was cocked on her head, as if it had got that way in a crowd and she just thought “Aw, the hell with it” and left it that way.
She made excited motions to the girl cashier, pointing toward the door as she talked, then ran back to her table, pushed a couple of dishes around, then ran out the door and down the street.
The cashier dropped everything and ran to a phone booth. She was out in about 10 seconds, it seemed, and sent a waitress after the manager, who came running from downstairs. He was a tall, blond, startled-looking young man.
He listened a minute, then went to the table where the woman had been sitting, looked all around, and under the table. About that time the woman in white came back, and started telling it all again to the cashier and the manager.
Now came a Montreal bobby hurrying in from the street. It had been no more than a minute since the cashier phoned. The Montreal police are fast. The bobby was in blue uniform, with long trousers, and the white Sam Brown belt and white sun helmet that make British police look so dignified.
The woman in white jumped over to meet him, grabbed him by the belt, and started pumping her story at him. He listened and nodded. In about 30 seconds two more bobbies arrived in a squad car, and joined the audience. They all listened for maybe 10 minutes, then one by one they drifted out.
The manager and the cashier and the woman in white carried on with their animated talking and their worried looks. At last, pretty cool, the woman sat down and finished her meal. Then the manager took her downstairs to his office.
The total time since the woman in white first jumped up from her table had been about 20 minutes. Suddenly the manager came leaping up the steps, two at a time. He strode into the vestibule, where he picked up something from the top of the radiator.
It was a folded-up newspaper. Fumbling in his eagerness, he unfolded it. Inside was a woman’s purse. The manager looked at it, then looked up and all around the restaurant, sort of grinning like a kid on Christmas morning after opening his presents, as if to say “look what I’ve got!”
Then he went dashing downstairs. As he passed a table, he said out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s the richest thing I ever heard of.”
In a few minutes the manager and the woman in white came back up. She signed a traveler’s check, paid her bill, left a tip for the waitress, and after much thanking to the manager and cashier, bustled out.
The cops never came back. There was nothing about it in the morning papers.
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That was the way it looked to the wondering diners. Here is what actually happened:
A large woman with a foreign accent stopped at the table where the woman in white was eating, and asked her a direction somewhere. Pretending not to understand the reply, she leaned over closely and tarried.
A few moments later, the woman in white missed her purse. She dashed out into the street, but couldn’t find the woman. The bobbies came and got the facts. And then not 20 minutes after it happened, the manager’s phone rang.
When he answered a woman’s voice said: “You’ll find the pocketbook on the radiator just inside the door in a newspaper.” And there it was. A newsboy had brought it over from across the street. A woman had given it to the boy to put on the radiator.
When the pocketbook was lifted it contained about $3 in change, $200 in traveler’s checks, $700 worth of jewelry knotted up in a handkerchief, and a railroad ticket from Montreal to St. Paul.
When they found it on the radiator, everything was there but the $3.
If the police ever find the woman who took it, I hope that instead of locking her up they let her go. Either she must need it desperately, the $3, I mean, or she’s an honest woman who wanted very much to have to steal $3.
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