THE great Beggarsdale crimewave continues but, this week, the forces of law and order have had a stroke of luck - thanks to an incident straight out of the Keystone Cops.

The week before last, an attentive reader might recall, the Dale was agog with the fact that we had two criminal escapades under way at the same time.

There has been another rash of burglaries but, much more intriguing, the Fraud Squad have been on the trail of the man we call Mildew Meldrew, who paid £185,000 for a cottage which, we now know, he bought for cash!

Come Sunday, this was a matter of intense discussion in the Beggars' Arms when Owd Tom, peering through the windows as he waited for a fresh pint, suddenly exclaimed: "Eh up, look at Gladys. Wonder what mischief she's up to."

We rushed to the window and, in front of Mildew's cottage, stood a posh foreign sports car.

At his front door, a somewhat buxom blonde lady with very high heels and a very short skirt was trying the front door lock.

The Innkeeper's Lady got onto the phone - the Fraud Squad had asked her to keep an eye open for any strange goings-on - and we continued our vigil.

Gladys, as Tom had dubbed the lass, for she did look a bit like a barmaid in a 1940s British movie, went through her huge bunch of keys at least twice and then, disgusted, threw them into her posh car, slammed the door, - and then came marching across The Lane heading straight for The Beggars'.

"Look aht," shouted Tom. The door opened, in strode Gladys, and we all pretended not to notice. "Double Bacardi and coke," snapped the woman. The Innkeeper bowed his head submissively, served the drink, and asked in all innocence: "Are you looking for someone, Madame."

She stiffened and then let loose a stream of abuse in a South Yorkshire accent: "I am that and when I get 'old of the bleeper, 'e'll wish 'e'd never bin born."

She took a deep breath and seemed about to go on when, from The Brow, came a piercing scream of skidding tyres followed by a loud metallic crash, and the tinkle of falling glass.

We rushed out into the car park. There, halfway up the brow outside the entrance to Owd Tom's Hard Rock Farm was a crumpled police car and an even more crumpled quad bike - Owd Tom's bike.

And so the police collared the Beggarsdale Burglars in the act of robbing Tom of his prized quad bike - for the second time.

I think "caught in possession" is the apt phrase, for colliding head-on with a squad car whilst riding a stolen vehicle is not quite your ideal getaway for the criminal classes.

By the time they got that lot sorted out, the mysterious Gladys and her expensive sports car were gone, and it was she the police were in such a hurry to meet. The plot, as they say, thickens.

* The Curmudgeon is a satirical column based on a fictitious character in a mythical village.