The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1893-07-21
A BURGLARY.

Ionce knewtwoindustrious mechanics
named Pierre and Baptiste. They dwelt
in a ramshackle tenement at Sau1t aux
Beleuil, where each had a dozen chill
dren to support besides their wives, who,
it is grievous to relate, were drones.
They were only nominally acquainted
with that goodly art commonly asso-
ciated with charwomen.
Pierre and Baptiste were hard workers.
They worked far into the night and oc-
casionally the thin mists of dawn had
begun to break on the narrow city pave
ments before their labors would cease.
No one could truthfully say that theirs
was not a hard earned pillow. Some
times they did not toll in vain. 1t de-
pended largely upon the police.
1t was early one November that this
horny handed pair planned the bur-
glary of a certain safe located in a whole
sale establishment in st. Mark street.
On the particular evening that Pierre
and Baptiste hit upon for the deed the
head bookkeeper had been having a
wrangle with his accounts.
1 Cdu u l1ldhO ucdoO IL UGill VI Dll1o. lC
declared to his employer, the senior
member of the firm, "yet l am con-
WINGED 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 Pm
blessed if l can find out"
The fact was that the monthly sales
had been unusually heavy, and a pageof
the balance had been misled. The head
bookkeeper spent upward of an hour in
casting up both the entries of himself
and his subordinates after the establish
ment had closed its doors for the day.
Then he went home to supper deter
mined to return and locate the deficit if
he didn't get a wink of sleep until morn
ing.
Bookkeepers, it must be bornei in mind,
have highly sensitive organisms, which
are susceptible to the smallest atom re-
fecting upon their probity OF skill. At
$50 the bookkeeper returned and COM
menced anew his critical calculations.
He worked precisely three hours and a
half, at the end of which period he sud-
denly 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 num-
bered!"
He turned over the pages of the bal
ance on his desk, and, sure enough, the
usual numerical mark Or designation in
the upper left hand corner which should
follow II was missing. Page - in all
likelihood had slipped into some remote
corner of the safe.
The safe was a large one, partially re-
ceding into the wall and containing all
the papers, documents and several day
receipts in cash and drafts of the firm.
The head bookkeeper in his efforts at
unearthing the lost page of the cash bal
ance 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 it 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 bookkeeper was a prisoner.
He heard the resonant click-that was
all. His candle went out.
The bookkeeper at the outset lost his
presence of mind. He fought like a
Gagged 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 position 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 abnormal
ly sensitive, was almost split into frag-
ments. A frightful, monotonous clangor
rent the interior of the safe.
The bookkeeper used to observe after
ward that a single seconds deviation Of
characteristic thought and he would
have gone mad. Stronger minds in a
parallel situation would have indeed col
lapsed. But a weaker man can never
confront the inevitable, but clings more
stubbornly to hope. They are only weak
individuals who in the act of drowning
catch at straws.
As the bookkeeper felt himself grad
ually growing faint for want of air to
breathe his revivifed hope led him to
deliberately crash his fist into the wood
work 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 bookkeeper's ear
was that of a drill. Although acutely
discerned within, the sound was practi-
cally smothered on the outside of the
vault.
At one end of the drill was q cavity,
rapidly growing larger, in one of the
steel panels. At its other end wa q
heavy. warty fist, part Of the anatomy
Of Baptiste, tho industrious mechanic.