Produced by Victorian/Edwardian Pictorial Magazines, Jonathan Ingram, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. THE STRAND AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY Vol. 5, Issue. 30. June 1893 * * * * * [Illustration: "THE HEAD BOOK-KEEPER STEPPED OUT OF THE SAFE." (_Pierre and Baptiste._)] 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 Beloeuil, 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." [Illustration: "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.