The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30,
June 1893, by Various

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

Author: Various

Editor: George Newnes

Release Date: January 7, 2008 [EBook #24188]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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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 th