"HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY!!"

British police chiefs studied the annual report of bulldog-jawed Lord Byng of Vimy, commissioner of Metropolitan Police of London. Indictable criminal offenses rose from 17,664 in 1929 to 20,553 in 1930. London's murders increased from ten to 21 in the same period. * There was a marked increase in crimes of violence. Only last week three unidentified men held up the Clydesdale Bank, at Clydebank, near Glasgow, shot two tellers dead and escaped. Scotch police blamed "Americans."

Even so the Byng report and the Clydesdale holdup were enough for police chiefs to plan a revolutionary move, the arming of London's bobbies. Ever since their organizer, Sir Robert Peel, lent his nickname to the London Police, they have carried nothing more formidable than a short wooden truncheon. Last week the tradition of the incorruptible, unarmed British policeman (like the tradition of the invulnerable Bank of England) trembled in the balance. Twenty-five bobbies were up on charges of accepting bribes from publicans, bookmakers, and tradespeople.

There was one encouraging fact in the Byng report. Lord Byng pointed with pride to the fact that nine of 1930's 21 murderers committed suicide. In the twelve remaining cases ten arrests were made. In only one case could the police make no progress.

But British police were baffled again last week, in the mysterious affair of Lieutenant Chevis and the Manchurian partridge.

Lieutenant Hubert G. Chevis, a dashing artillery officer with wavy black hair and a handsome mustache, was an instructor at Aldershot Training Camp. As a great treat his pretty young wife went up to town and purchased a brace of Manchurian partridge, a little one and a big one, for the lieutenant's dinner. As a dutiful British wife she gave her husband the big one. He took a few mouthfuls, complained of the taste and made his wife sample it. The two partridges were taken out to the kitchen and burned. That night Lieutenant Hubert Chevis died in great agony. Mrs. Chevis became violently ill, but recovered. Lieutenant Chevis' stomach was found full of strychnine.

Three days later a modest obituary notice appeared in several papers. That same day Sir William Chevis, the lieutenant's father, received a mysterious telegram from Dublin. It was signed J. Hartigan, read: HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY.

Dublin reported that the strange telegram had been put in by a person signing the name of J. Hartigan, giving the Hibernian Hotel as his address. At the hotel no J. Hartigan was known, but a Dublin chemist reported that he had sold some strychnine eight weeks earlier to a man whose description tallied with what the telegraph clerk could remember of J. Hartigan.

In London, experts inspected the remains of the shipment of Manchurian partridges but no more poisoned birds were found. Sportsmen advanced a new theory. In Manchuria hunters are in the habit of poisoning the carcasses of partridges with strychnine and leaving them on the ground as bait to catch rare foxes without spoiling the fur. One of these bait birds might have found its way to Lieut. Chevis' dinner table. But what about the HOORAYS of J. Hartigan?

London reporters went to work on their own account and discovered another fact. Pretty Mrs. Chevis had been married to the lieutenant only six months. Her first husband, the father of her three children, was a stalwart, red-faced horse doctor by the name of Major G. T. T. Jackson of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Major Jackson was interviewed.

"I consider the sender of that telegram a cad and a blackguard," said the Major, who was very anxious to prove that at the time the fatal meal was eaten he was miles away at Northampton. "The Irish are a passionate people. Chevis was a fascinating man. Women loved him. Men liked him and he was popular. He was so strong he could pick me up in one hand and you in the other. . . . Since the tragedy I have met my former wife on the Eastbourne front [seaside promenade]. Mrs. Chevis was staying at another hotel here and I was taking my bulldog for a walk when I met her. ... I could see that she did not wish to talk about the affair and I did not discuss it."

Mrs. Chevis was more uncommunicative. She was discovered in a seaside cottage at Hove with her three children and her brown cocker spaniel. Said she:

"I have lost my husband too recently to enjoy a holiday. I want to see the whole thing cleared up. It is terrible not to know and to keep wondering."

The inquest got under way last week, but almost immediately bogged down in a plethora of theories and a scarcity of evidence. The newspapers seized on a theory of Major Jackson. Lieut. Chevis had spent nine months last year on duty in India. Might this be a case of Indian revenge? The idea was popular with Thriller Edgar Wallace's public.

The inquest, which has been dragging on for weeks, finally came to an end following Coroner W. J. Francis's instructions: "There is no evidence on which you can find a definite verdict; therefore I direct you to find an open verdict."

J. H. Ryffel, a chemist of the British Home Office, announced that the partridge could not possibly have eaten the two grains of strychnine found in Lieut. Chevis's stomach. Dublin policemen kept on looking for Mr. Hartigan.

* New York City averages about 360 murders per annum.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.