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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB L HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES ''j OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF! ZJ "The Particular Thief" By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter TTELLO EVERYBODY: - And who's the guest speaker at our Adventure ban-J quet today? Well, sir, it's Mrs. Anna Robinson of Bronx, I N. Y. And what's she going to talk about? Why, Anna is going to tell the strange tale of the thief who didn't want money. ! That thief certainly made things complicated for Anna. If he had wanted money, it would have been simple. Anna could have given it to him, and he'd have been satisfied. But when a man demands some-; thing you haven't and threatens to kill you if you don't give it to him Well, if you're ever in a spot like that, I hope you make out as well as Anna did. It all happened in a doctor's office in the little upstate New York town of JefTersonville. In 1927, Anna was working there as a nurse. It j wasn't a hard job, but it was a lonesome one, for the doctor was out on1 calls most of the day, leaving Anna in charge. One quiet afternoon in March, though, Anna had a caller. The doc-j tor was out as usual when the door bell rang, and Anna answered the ring to admit a tall, ragged stranger with a desperate look in his eye. One look at him told Anna that this was an emergency case but little did she dream that the emergency would be her ownl This Caller Just Wanted "Coke." The man pushed his way past her and hurried into the office. "Is the doctor in"? he wanted to know. That's where Anna gave the wrong answer. The man was obviously in a hurry. The doctor wouldn't be back for several hours. Anna told him she wasn't expecting the Doc to return for quite a while and suggested sug-gested that he try at the office of another doctor nearby. It was just what the stranger wanted to know. A change came over his face, and a crafty look gleamed in his eyes. "So you're alone, eh"? he said. "I was taken aback," says Anna. "I said, 'Yes, I'm alone,' but the minute I said it I could have bitten off my tongue. If I'd only thought first told him there were other people in the building I could have saved myself the trouble that I was evidently in for. But the damage was done, and all I could do was stammer, 'What do you want?' He said: 'Oh, I'll get it myself,' and started walking toward the inner office." At first Anna thought he was just a petty thief, and as the man walked toward the office she remembered something the doctor had often told her. "If ever a tramp or a thief comes in," he had said, "don't try "Where's the coke?" he cried angrily. to oppose him. Let him take what money there is and get out." But the stranger didn't seem to be interested in money. He passed straight by the desk, went to the medicine cabinet and began staring at the labels on the bottles. He stared a long time while his forehead knitted in a puzzled puz-zled frown. Evidently he couldn't understand the labels. At length he turned angrily on Anna and cried: "Where's tjtie coke?" Ready to Kill for the Drug. That explained things and at the same time it threw Anna into a panic. This man was no petty thief who would be satisfied with money. He was a dope addict, crazed by a craving for cocaine. He would rob kill do anything to get that precious "shot" of narcotic, and to her dismay, dis-may, Anna realized that there wasn't so much as a grain of cocaine in the place. -"We have no cocaine," she stammered. The man turned on her in a rage, his eyes blazing, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Don't lie to me." he shouted. "Get it. Get it or I'll " And he took a step toward her, raising his claw-like hands to her throat. Sajv Anna: "I was terribly frightened. My thoughts ran in circles. He stcod between me and the telephone, madness and murder in his eyes. I could not hope that someone would come in, as the local people knew the doctor's office hours were in the evening. Screaming would do me no good, for screams coming from a doctor's office might only mean that some poor devil was having a broken bone set. And if I even tried to scream, those terrible claw-like hands would close about my throat. There was only one way out. I had to gamble on the one defense God gave to women talk." She Talked Him Into Submission. With fear clutching at her heart, Anna began to talk quietly to the stranger. She explained that few doctors kept pure cocaine co-caine that they used derivatives like novocaine instead, and that novocaine wouldn't give him the effect he wanted. She told him a lot of other things about drugs, too. As she talked, her fear of the man wore away, for the madness had gone out of his eyes and he sank into a chair, head hanging and dejected. Then Anna switched to another tack. She began talking against the use of drugs, painting a terrible picture of what they would do to him if he kept on using them. She told him the best thing to do would be to go to the local health officer and take a cure for drug addiction told him that if his system really needed cocaine, the health officer would give it to him. And believe it or not, the dope addict agreed with her. He waited while Anna called the health officer on the phone, and went along peacefully when the officer came to get him. After he had gone, though, Anna lay down on the couch and cried hysterically. When the doctor came back he gave her a sedative and sent her home. All that was quite a few years ago, and Anna has been away from Jeffersonville a long time. She's married now, she tells me, to a New York policeman, but I doubt if that cop husband of hers ever did a finer bit of police work than Anna did with her tongue when she talked that drug-crazed maniac right into the hands of the law. Copyright. 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