World: The Cheddington Caper

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Britain's Postmaster-General Reginald Bevins was not one of the jubilant ones. He believes the robbery was probably an inside job, since the mobsters could hardly by chance have held up the particular Royal Mail carrying so colossal a hoard. If so, the gang's informer must be someone high up in the postal administration, since British railroads are never told what is carried in the Royal Mail trains, and the postal workers on board are equally ignorant of what they handle in the plain, unmarked mail sacks.

Rewards totaling $728,000 were offered by banks, insurance companies and the government. Scotland Yard was hard at work tracking down rumors that, days before the robbery, a red airplane had taken off and landed at an abandoned R.A.F. field near Cheddington, and that mysterious men had been seen shooting films of trains and the stretch of rail line. Asked if he felt a sneaking admiration for the artistry displayed by the robbers, Postmaster-General Bevins sniffed: "I don't feel any admiration for these gentlemen at all." Maybe not. But the shade of Jesse James, whose first and most famous score came to a measly $3,000 on a Rock Island Railroad holdup, would undoubtedly hail his British cousins with a courtly bow and a sweep of his broad-brimmed hat.