m*- w - Clpdigital.org

HOW YOUR AUTOMOBILE MAY BE STOLEN 39
liant flash of inspiration to look over it
and take its number. Then they found
the missing car. So much for what the
police sometimes see—when the object
searched for even is directly under their
official noses.
"The old game of stealing a car and
altering it and its serially numbered parts
until its own maker wouldn't know it,
is pretty well played out. One reason is
the fact that the tricks are all known,
another is the fact that cars have gone
down so much in price, and the profit in
peddling a stolen, disguised and secondhand
car is little compared with what it
used to be. The crooks do steal and get
away with a tremendous number of the
road-louse make of car because they lookall
alike, there are so many on the road
that there's no watching for stolen
models after the number is doped around,
and they sell more readily second-hand
than any other make. So far as a car
going for good is concerned, I'd be more
afraid of losing a jitmobile than I would
a big $2,000-eight, painted robin's egg
blue. The latter might be worth a thousand
second-hand, all right, but a man
might as well steal a torch-light procession
so far as concealment is concerned,
and it would be a blame sight harder to
sell because chaps with a thousand are a
lot scarcer than chaps with a couple of
hundred.
"The crooked automobile mechanic
really after the coin is more likely to do
like the fellows who frisked Brown's car
for its tires and its tools and maybe its
magneto and loose accessories. There's
not a trace after they get a block from
the robbed car, few distinguishing marks
on the stolen goods, and a good sale for
them. A job pulled off every night makes
a nice little income.
"Without question the most efficient
form of lock is this new heavy heattreated
malleable iron band that locks
around the front wheel of the machine
on the side nearest the curb, and which
carries a heavy pointed steel stud. When
the machine is rolled with this on the
wheel it raises the whole wheel with a
beautiful thumping noise, and it makes
a plain trail in any pavement. Speed is
impossible without half tearing the car to
pieces; the noise is like a cable car going
over a quadruple crossing, and the 'sign'
left by the car is plain to read.
"Best of it is that you can't get it off
in a hurry. It is heavy and heat-treated,
and it takes a good mechanic a quarter of
an hour or so to hack-saw through it.
The lock is fool-proof and covered up by
the heaviest part of the steel. Also,
which is last, but not least, the would-be
thief fooling with it is doing it in plain
sight, on the outside of the car, and the
company making it has placarded the city
with signs announcing a reward of $100
for the arrest and conviction of a person
stealing a machine so equipped. That
makes the plain ordinary citizen take
notice if he finds some fellow fussing
with one of these devices. All in all, it
is about the best protection that can be
secured at this time, when quack remedies
for automobilists' ills are in the
great majority.
"Its weak point is that you're out of
luck if you lock your car with it and lose
your keys. The company furnishes a
certificate that you're the owner and have
a right to run the car with it on, or they
will send up a man with a duplicate key,
but you can't cut it off with a pair of bolt
cutters and you sure make a beautiful
spectacle driving a car with it on, to
say nothing of the ambitious gents who
pinch you twice to every block in hopes
of the hundred. Also it suffers from the
laziness of the average man, who'd rather
turn a key in a lock on the instrument
board than climb out and clamp the
hickey around the tire, because the latter
makes a demand upon his energy.
"The next best lock is probably that
on the steering wheel, preventing any
control of the car, and hard to jimmy.
The third best is a good Yale lock on the
instrument board on either ignition or
starting system. Only this Ford switch
key thing makes me tired because that
doesn't discourage even the joy-rider.
Any old thing will replace that."'