In a Little Spanish Town

When he took off his pants in a sleeping compartment of the Barcelona-Bilbao express one night last week, New York's Congressman Eugene J. Keogh, Democrat, made a serious mistake. He hung them near the open window. In the next compartment, Congressman James P. Richards, Democrat, of South Carolina, undressed and did likewise. When they woke up, both pairs of pants were gone.

Since the pair were junketing through Spain with two other Congressmen and Maine's G.O.P. Senator Owen Brewster, they were able to borrow pants without trouble. But the incident set up a great and indignant gobbling: Keogh had been carrying the group's expense money in his wallet. It disturbed the Spanish police terribly also, since some of the Americanos were scheduled to talk to Generalissimo Franco in Madrid.

Through luck, industry, and the process of squeezing assorted stool pigeons until they quacked like ducks, the Spanish cops rounded up five train robbers, the pants (Congressman Richards' still had a rabbit's foot in one pocket). Congressman Keogh's wallet and $3,800. They announced, not without a flicker of national pride, that the theft had been accomplished at the town of Las Casetas with a fishing pole. The Congressmen accepted their belongings gratefully. At week's end the Generalissimo received the visitors with the air of a man who runs in train robbers on time.