Shrewd

How might a shrewd crook use a dignified manner, well-cut clothes, a gold-headed cane, proper language and a pretended association with a great public character to swindle a famed jeweler? One way might be to take the following steps:

1) Enter the jewelmart. Introduce himself as a member of the great man's household. Explain that he had been sent to select some rings to be sent on approval to the great man's town house before he left the city.

2) Ask the salesman his name and thus secure his business card.

3) Critically select the rings, order their immediate delivery.

4) Hasten to the great man's house. Observe delivery of the gems to the butler inside.

5) From a public telephone several hours later call the great man's home, speak for the jewelry firm, explain that the rings were delivered by mistake and that a salesman (name given) would call to whom, upon identification, the rings should be returned.

6) Go to the great man's house. Present the salesman's business card for identification. Ask for and receive the rings. Disappear.

Such last month was the shrewd method employed by one Cornelius J. Donovan, 54, confirmed criminal, to effect a swindle in Manhattan which even the police praised for its ingenuity. The great man whose name, town house and butler played unwitting parts in the crime was New York's Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The jewelmart was Fifth Avenue's fashionable Black, Starr & Frost. The salesman who gave up his card to the persuasive purchaser was one Thomas Patterson. The rings were two, valued at $800 and $750, containing diamonds set in platinum.

No less shrewd were New York detectives who last week arrested Donovan, starving, in a cheap Manhattan hotel; recovered the pawn tickets for the rings.