The Honest Thief

A man walked into the lost-and-found office in Leeds. He put a brown wallet on the desk. Renske, the clerk, looked up.

“I found this,” the man said.

Renske opened the wallet. There was no money inside. There were only three old photos: a small dog, a wedding, a baby.

She knew this wallet. Two days ago, a woman came in. She cried and said a thief took her bag near the station. Renske wrote a note about it. Now here was the wallet, but no bag and no money.

“Where is the rest?” Renske asked.

The man looked at his shoes. He said he was the thief. He took the bag for the money. He kept the money, but he could not keep the photos. They were the woman's family, not his.

Renske looked at him for a long moment. Then she picked up her pen and wrote one more note: wallet returned. The man left quickly, and she did not call the police.