The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 An Illustrated Monthly

Excerpt

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 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....