THE STRAND

AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY

Vol. 5, Issue 30.

June 1893

"The Head Book-keeper Stepped Out of the Safe."
(Pierre and Baptiste.)

By Beckles Willson.

I once knew two industrious mechanics named Pierre and Baptiste. They dwelt in a ramshackle tenement at Sault aux Belœuil, where each had half-a-dozen children to support, besides their wives; who, it is grievous to relate, were drones. They were only nominally acquainted with that godly art commonly associated with charwomen.

Pierre and Baptiste were hard workers. They worked far into the night and, occasionally, the thin mists of dawn had begun to break on the narrow city pavements before their labours would cease. No one could truthfully say that theirs was not a hard-earned pillow. Sometimes they did not toil in vain. It depended largely upon the police.

It was early one November that this horny-handed pair planned the burglary of a certain safe located in a wholesale establishment in St. Mark Street. On the particular evening that Pierre and Baptiste hit upon for the deed, the head book-keeper had been having a wrangle with his accounts.

"I can't make head or tail of this!" he declared to his employer, the senior member of the firm, "yet I am convinced everything must be right. An error of several hundred dollars has been carried over from each daily footing, but where the error begins or ends, I'm blessed if I can find out."

"THE HEAD BOOK-KEEPER HAD BEEN HAVING A WRANGLE WITH HIS ACCOUNTS."

The fact was that the monthly sales had been unusually heavy, and a page of the balance had been mislaid. The head book-keeper spent upwards of an hour in casting up both the entries of himself and his subordinates after the establishment had closed its doors for the day.

Then he went home to supper, determined to return and locate the deficit, if he didn't get a wink of sleep until morning.

Book-keepers, it must be borne in mind, have highly sensitive organisms, which are susceptible to the smallest atom reflecting upon their probity or skill. At half-past eight the book-keeper returned and commenced anew his critical calculations. He worked precisely three hours and a half; at the end of which period he suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead and exclaimed:—

"Idiot! Why haven't you looked in the safe for a missing sheet? Ten chances to one they have been improperly numbered!"

He turned over the pages of the balance on his desk, and, sure enough, the usual numerical mark or designation in the upper left-hand corner which should follow eleven was missing. Page twelve, in all likelihood, had slipped into some remote corner of the safe.

The safe was a large one, partially receding into the wall and containing all the papers, documents, and several day receipts in cash and drafts of the firm.

The head book-keeper, in his efforts at unearthing the lost page of the cash balance, was obliged to intrude his entire person into the safe. Fearful lest the candle he held should attract attention from the street, showing out as it did against the black recesses of the safe, upon entering he drew the door slightly ajar.

As he stepped in the tail of his coat caught on an angle of the huge riveted lock; the massive gate swung to as if it weighed no more than a pound, and the book-keeper was a prisoner.

He heard a resonant click—that was all. His candle went out.

The book-keeper at the outset lost his presence of mind. He fought like a caged animal. He first exerted almost superhuman strength against the four sides of the iron tomb. Then his body collapsed and, not for an instant losing consciousness, he found himself sitting in a partially upright posture, unable to so much as stir a muscle.

It was almost at the same moment, although hours seemed to have passed, that the drum of his ear, now abnormally sensitive, was almost split into fragments. A frightful monotonous clangour rent the interior of the safe.

"HE STEPPED IN."

The book-keeper used to observe afterwards that a single second's deviation of characteristic thought and he would have gone mad. Stronger minds in a parallel situation would have indeed collapsed. But a weaker man can never confront the inevitable, but clings more stubbornly to hope. They are only weak individualities who, in the act of drowning, catch at straws.

As the book-keeper felt himself gradually growing faint for want of air to breathe, his revivified hope led him to deliberately crash his fist into the woodwork with which the interior of the safe was fitted, in secretaire fashion, one drawer being built above another. This gave him a few additional cubic feet of air.

As may have been conjectured, the noise which smote the book-keeper's ear was that of a drill. Although acutely discerned within, the sound was practically smothered on the outside of the vault.

At one end of the drill was a cavity, rapidly growing larger, in one of the steel panels. At its other end was a heavy, warty fist, part of the anatomy of Baptiste, the industrious mechanic. Baptiste held the drill while his comrade, Pierre, pounded it in.

Soon the two burglars became aware that some sort of animal commotion was going on within the safe. It nearly drove them into convulsions of astonishment. Baptiste was so startled that he dropped the drill.

"It is a ghost," he said.

Baptiste was for throwing up the job uncompromisingly on the spot, but this proposal met with obstacles. His fellow workman, who was of stiffer courage, rejected it with scorn, as savouring too much of the superstitious. Pierre had a large family to support, he argued. He spoke frankly. They could not afford to throw away the opportunities of Providence. To his friend and co-labourer, the burden of his remarks was:—

"Lâche! Go hon! You make me tired wiz yer ghosts an' tings. Let's not have no beast foolin'—see? De job is commence: Allons!"

The upshot of this was that Pierre and Baptiste went back to work. At the third crack of the drill, Pierre crossed himself, and said:—

"Baptiste, dere's a man in dat safe!"

Both men grew pale as death at the very suggestion. Baptiste, for instance, was so frightened he couldn't utter a syllable. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. However, Pierre, as usual, was the first to recover. He applied his ear, first to the lock and then to the drill-hole.

"Hey, in dere!" he cried, yet not so loud as to be heard on the side-walk. To this there came a faint response—a very faint shout indeed; it sounded as if it were a mile away:—

"For God's sake, give me air! I am locked in here. Try and burst open the safe!"

The two burglars