In using combination locks, it is best to change the numbers frequently, especially when a clerk is about to leave the bank’s employ. Of course what I am speaking of now, more particularly, has to do with small banks in the villages and small cities, where clerks are loaded with greater responsibility than are those in the institutions of large cities. As an illustration of what might happen to a safe, I’ll mention the case of a New York business house. There had been a pestiferous leakage of money from the safe. Small amounts ranging from five dollars to four times that sum disappeared, leaving no trace of the thief. About all the employees were suspected. Every one was wondering if every one else wasn’t the thief. Finally the firm hired a private detective, and, behold, one night a man was detected red-handed opening the street door with a duplicate key, and the safe with a secret combination. The person proved to be a discharged clerk. Had the combination numbers been changed at his leave-taking, he couldn’t have opened the safe, and perhaps, having failed the first time, he wouldn’t have been tempted again. It doesn’t pay to be lax in business methods. I was introduced to a “right” watchman in Boston once upon a time, and having in view the looting of the bank in his charge, wanted the vault examined. The outer door of the vault was of wood and was next to the steel one. The watchman reported to me the next day what I wanted and more. The president had asked him if he’d opened the wooden door. He promptly denied it. But the president knew the door had been unlocked and opened and, not suspecting the watchman, believed that burglars, in some manner, had been tampering with the vault. How he knew it was this: Every evening before leaving the bank, the president closed the wooden door and put a certain kind of paste on one of the hinges. The morning after the watchman opened the door, the paste was found scraped back by the turning of the hinge. It was a faithful witness to the fact. Had the watchman admitted that he’d heard suspicious sounds which led him to open the door, the president would have thought no more about it undoubtedly. As it was, the watchfulness of that bank official spoiled my plans. It was a simple obstacle in my way, but it was effective in preserving the bank’s funds. Jimmy Hope, a notorious bank burglar, got into a certain bank in Bleecker Street in New York City, and, taking off the dial of the vault lock, drilled a hole through the door to strike the steel dog in the lock. The object was to get at the dog and break it. Bad aim resulted, and the dog was missed. Too much time had been consumed to drill another hole, and putty was used to fill up the useless one. For months the tampering was undiscovered, not to mention the marks on the dial plate caused by the unscrewing of the dial. Not to have discovered these plain evidences of tampering seemed to me the rankest sort of neglect. The bank was afterward robbed.