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. Theydwelt in a ramshackle tenement at Sault aux Belœuil, where each hadhalf-a-dozen children to support, besides their wives; who, it isgrievous to relate, were drones. They were only nominally acquaintedwith that godly art commonly associated with charwomen.
Pierre and Baptiste were hard workers. They worked far into the nightand, occasionally, the thin mists of dawn had begun to break on thenarrow city pavements before their labours would cease. No one couldtruthfully say that theirs was not a hard-earned pillow. Sometimes theydid not toil in vain. It depended largely upon the police.
It was early one November that this horny-handed pair planned theburglary of a certain safe located in a wholesale establishment in St.Mark Street. On the particular evening that Pierre and Baptiste hit uponfor the deed, the head book-keeper had been having a wrangle with hisaccounts.
"I can't make head or tail of this!" he declared to his employer, thesenior member of the firm, "yet I am convinced everything must be right.An error of several hundred dollars has been carried over from eachdaily footing, but where the error begins or ends, I'm blessed if I canfind 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 pageof the balance had been mislaid. The head book-keeper spent upwards of[Pg 548]an hour in casting up both the entries of himself and his subordinatesafter the establishment had closed its doors for the day.
Then he went home to supper, determined to return and locate thedeficit, 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 probityor skill. At half-past eight the book-keeper returned and commenced anewhis critical calculations. He worked precisely three hours and a half;at the end of which period he suddenly clapped his hand to his foreheadand exclaimed:—
"Idiot! Why haven't you looked in the safe for a missing sheet? Tenchances 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 cornerwhich should follow eleven was missing. Page twelve, in all likelihood,had slipped into some remote corner of the safe.
The safe was a large o