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1 safe deposit br the rev edward everett hale dd i chapter i antony blake left the office of rumrill co a good deal disappointed he was him self a shrewd and intelligent fellow he had aeoored the patents on his new invention and waa ready to proceed with the manufacture he had oarried the paper the drawing bis model machine to rumrill co and they had them in consideration they now offered him s800 for the whole thing if he would turn it all over to them he had pro- poaed one and another scheme by which he should go into business as a partner with them these had been referred by the m ng partner to tbe mr jorkins behind tho scene wno waa an imaginary person created for the purpose of saying no when the managing partner waa ashamed to prao- tloally all these schemes had been refused and antony was now to take the sc0 or nothing this was not his first ex perience in such business he knew by this time that the cple who bring things before the pubiio tbey inventions be they books or be they ideas generally expect tobe well paid for doing ao and ho knew that the system of cooperation whloh people are hoping for and praying for was by no means yet established with some bitterness of feeling it must be confessed though he was a food natnred fellew enough he walked own the street i of tamworth considering whether he would take the 800 and be done with it or whether he would go 5o pitts burg and see if there were better chances there 4ntony blake did not believe in debt and he knew how to live on a very little money but for all that he had very little money in store and he certainly i did not have the 10000 whioh would be necessary for him it he were to equip a little machine shop of his own and make his own automatic car coupler bat as it happened he was a person well esteemed in the whole com munity of tamworth as he deserved to be i should like to know however how much of this esteem he owed to one queer circum stance while he had to start in life with absolutely no property it happened that he did hold ss trustee for his mother some bonds whloh he considered worthless in the second issue of the cattaraugus and opelous- as railroad these bonds bad long since been taken off all lists known to brokers and it was long since any coupons had been paid still the cattaraugus and opelousas existed and there were sanguine people among whom his mother waa one who supposed that at some time payment would be resumed antony being her trustee had to keep these b onds somewhere and he had been notified by legal advisers that he must keep them ia one of the security vaults whioh are now established in all the consid erable oltiss he had hired a modest safe at the amicable of tamworth and at the amicable yon have the facilties of a charming reading room where are all the new magazines where you can wash your hands if you need you oan make an appointment with a friend you can write a note on the atnlcables papor these facilities are thrown open to you be cause you have hired perhaps for only 10 a year a safe in that bank antony had fonnd that here was by far the best olnb room in tamworth in that city they have what is known as the strangers rest well developed you oan go in and pay ten cents an hour for all the comforts of a club room and then go out again but antony found that in the long run 10 a year was cheap er for him then the strangers rest at ten cents an hour and what i bhould like to know is whether his standing in that com munity had not materially risen since the old dons and widows and railroad trustees and other such persons who had their sates there found that he was one of the aooiu of the reading room of the amicable he auspeoted himself that it gave him theae advantages and he waa careful not to presume on them he took oare not to ait there writing lettera in times when a busi ness man would be at his counting room ho only looked in there at the hours when the most prominent of the dons were there he took oare not to appear to it as tho only loaf ing place whloh ho had in proportion as he was oantious in these regards the dons began to rcspcot him as one of themselves that is to say as a person who did not have to work very bard for his money and who had in the ohamber adjacent the secrets by which a quarterly revenue comes to the initiated without mnoh cracking of their finger nails or griming of their hands on this particular morning anthony was obliged to break his rule it was just the hour when he should not ordinarily have gone to tho amicable it was seldom in deed that he had any occasion to look at his mothers bonds in his safe for they were as worthless one month as they were another but to preserve the respectabilities of the place it had been his habit to have hla safe opened for him once a quarter aboub the 1st of may august and the corresponding quarters which he observed to be coupon quarters for some very distinguished dons he would retire into one of the little cells provided for the occasion open his box and then oarry it back that it might be deposit ed in hla safe again the last time that he had done this anthony had placed two fifty dollar bills in his little tin box to guard himself from spending them he knew that he shonld have enough money for his current expenses besides and he had not cared to make a permanent investment of this sum bit if he were to po to pitts burg he must have these two fifties in his pocket and he walked down to the amicable gavo the numter of his sife and his box was given to him the most honorable and virtuous warders are selected by the most ingenious and high ly approved competitive examinations yon present yourself at the gate and yon are personally known to tbe warder who speaks t you cordially and opens the gate to you as he would not do if you were one of those unknown loafers who have no safe in the security vault you pass through this prison gate joyfully for you know it is no prison to you you tell him that the day is line or that it is rainy as it may happen and pass on till you coma to another gate and another warder you tell him that it is fine or that it is rainy as before he also calls yon byname and aays that you are looking well and you enter a second passage this passage is provided with little catacombs or columbaria precise ly like those under or near the city of ron e except that these are much smaller and that these catacombs have now no doors but in the security vaults each catacomb has a little iron door and these doors are numbered you remember by mnemonio processes known to yourself what is the number of yours the number cf antonys was 4 927 you meet in this passage a smiling gentle manly friend who also calls you by name expresses his hope that you are well and tells you what the weather is you also tell him these are not passwords but they are the civilities of the occasion you thin mention to him in whisper if vou please the number of your box he affsots to re member- does remember perhaps and with his key adjusts the look of your catacomb but please to observe he cannot open the catacomb because he has not your key your key has been given to you long since when you hired your catacomb you then open the catacomb with your key which you can not do till he has first turned bis key in the lock in the catacomb yon find a long nar row tin bx unless you should be a very great don in that case you have a large catacomb and you have a large tin box but antony was a very little don as the reader knews and he had therefore a box long enough for any coupon bond bub not large enough to contain many he drew out his box thanked the courte ous attendant passed warder no 2 again who asked him if all was right and then in the passage between nps 1 and 2 selected a little room like that in which you eat cysters in restaurants of some oilier when it is supposed that you are ashamed to eat oysters and wish to have a separate cell assigned for the purpose lougo into this cell whioh you find lighted there is a little table for you with a pen and ink and blotting paper and a pair of large scissors theae aolaaora ate there that you may out off the coupons from yonr bonds observe with admiration that both the requirements which have been referred to are fulfilled you are here as lonely as robinson crusoe jwas before friday came all your wealth is in your hands yon oan do with it what yon choose a minute be fore this wealth was in a safe which nobody excepting you could open and a minute hence it will be in that safe apaln on this occasion antony blake found some difficulty in opening hla box his key seemed to be out ot order but being an in genious person it happened that he had a little skeleton key with him and with this he threw open the lock of the box he saw in a moment that it was not bis box the securities in tt were those of the c k and w c b and q b c and d securities many of them absolutely gilt edged in the market of the moment there were one or two united states bonds and in short if a good fairy had touched his mothers bonds and changed them into bonds of the very best she could not have done better for him than had been done here antony bake was amazed and dozed he lifted the bonds ont one after another to see by what process of evolution the cattar augus and opelousas had been thus changed and with a vague feeling that he should find his two fifty dollar notes at the bottom the fifty dollar notea were not there but there was a little parcel of five or six manu script notes tied up with a white ribbon antony had no disposition to get at other peoples secrets but he did want to know how these things came into his box and he looked at tbelr addresses as be could do without opening them three were to evelyn haddam three were to fergus maclntire antony had never heard of either of theo people the letters were numbered and th i i e of eaoh was written on tho envelope au observed that the last two were written un tbe same day may 29 it is a romance i think bald he and he thought so because of the ribbon but clearly the most curious thing in the romance was that the letters were in his box mind ana determined him wisely or not to make no complaint to tbe head centre till he had taken tbe advice of a lawyer friend meanwhile hla first business was to go to pittsburg and to get the 100 whioh he needed for hi journey there was no money in tbe box and of coarse antony could not have taken it it there had bsen seeing it was not his greenbacks says an eminent lepal authority are the currency ot thieves bat even had antony been a thief he had no opportunity to steal there were the six letter tied np with the white ribbon antony did look at the addresses a had been said bat at the moment his only wish was that his despised cattaraugus aid opelousas bonds were in his hands he remembered as he often had remembered before the pathetic grief of robinson crusoe when the great current of the orinoco was sweeping him to tea in his canoe- then poor robin son looked at his retreating island the is land which he h a always called a pris n and wished that he might return to it bo- cause it was his home so poor antony who had always despised the cattaraugus and opelousas now wished that he had them in his hands in point of fact he put back the box into the cell from which he had taken it and he went at once to his lawyer cousin but the lawyer cousin was not in antony did not like to tell his queer story to a stranger he therefore borrowed a hundred dollars from the lawyer cousins clerk and went that night on the train to pittsburg chapter iv x chapter ii lb is possible that there are one or two of the humbler readers of this little story who are nob aocquainted with the careful machi nery of a security sate company and as the story hingei on that machinery it may be well to explain it you see yon are to have the double combination patent absolute se curity that it given to the largest corpora tion in the world say the bank of england and at the same time you who are as poor as antony blako was are to have your own little separate cell in which your own pro perty is kept and nobody else in the world may interfere with it au this is arranged by a very ingenious system of policemen attentive clerks doorkeepers gilt piokets of iron iron floors below and above so that fire cannot bun your securities nor water drown them nor thelvet break in nor rust corrupt them chapter iii if young blake had gone at once to the head centre of the wonderful combination of warders guardians olerks and assistants who made np the hierarchy of the amicable this story would nover have been written and the reader would at this moment be seeking other occupation than that he has in hand before a story oan be told says mr anthony trollopo there must bu a story to tell all that follows on these pages spring from mrblakes aversion to take the head oentre into his confidence or indeed any other of tho guardians in the hierarchy in the first place he knew none of them personally though as has been seen they all mew him professionally that is to say itwas the professional bnslness of eaoh of them to know antony blake by sight and to sea that he always bad tho box in no 4 when he wanted it aid that no one else ever had it and also that he never had auy other box than his own but all of them had been imported from new york to carry on the amicable whioh was a new enterprise iu tamworth so that he had not made their acquaintance other than officially in the second place as occurred to him now for the first time he should have gone to the head centre before if he meant to go at all he should have gone when his little key did nob open the bond box he should not have picked the look of a box whioh as he now knew was not hiswith his llttlo skeleton key in the third place he was not sure whether he should best advance the ends ot justice by going to the head centre he could say that his 100 were not in his box but here were securities of three or four hundred times as much worth and as he well knew there was nob any one outside an idiot asylum who would steal cattaraugus and opelousas bonds it might be that the head centre and some of tbe others were engaged in a common fraad of which he had in his hands a lit jo clew these consideration pasted through hit this is nob one of those stories which tor ments the reader by refusing to tell him all the writer knows once for all let the reader understand that the bonds and the letters whioh antony blake found in his box belonged to a very nice girl whose name was edith lane how it happened that they were all in this box shall now bo briefly told it was sone six months before antony blake found them that edith lanes father called her into his own room he then ex plained to her that she was so old that she must learn to take care of her own affairs i do not mean said he to turn over to you now the whole of your mothera property but i do mean to turn over to you so much that you shall not have to come running to me when you want to buy a shoestring and a paper of pins i have placed in this envelope a number of bonds i am going to show you how to cut off the coupons from theae bonds you will have to do this twice a year yon will then have to carry these coupons to the waverley bank where i have opened an ac count for you when you want money you will write a oheok on the waverley bank and yon will go for the money yourself or send for it you oan do as you please about keeping an account of these things if i were you i would keep a little cash book but i shall ask no questions if you oome to me at any time for money i shall then ask questions but it is a great deal better that you shall learn to take care of your own af fairs before i die poor edith was distressed and pained to hear her father talk of dying she said as much she said that she knew nothing aboub business and she bad a great deal rather go on as they were bat he was flint he told her that his precise object was to teach her to draw a check and to keep a bank account and to teach her something of her interest in the community not to say her duties in the community he had begun with thirty or forty thousand dollars of her iortune which he had put into these bonds edith was frightened and said she did not know where she would keep the bonds and ahe was afraid they might be stolen that said her father is the seoond thing that yon are to be taught yon will not keep these bonds i do not keep mine i have brought these this morning from my own safe to give them to you i have order ed the carriage and i am now going to take you down to what is known as the amicable safe company i am going to hire a little safe there in your name and you will keep your bonds in that eafe when you want to cnb off the ooupons yon will go down to the amicable yen will have tbe safe op3ned and yon will cut off what you need this frightened edith more than ever she almost cried bat ia her distress she referred to an old joke of the family bor rowed from georgia sketches it is the story of a yonng man whose father was urging him to marry and said to him where would you be if i had not married t the young fellow replied between his sobs yes dad but you married mother and i shall have to be put out to a strange gal edith said she did not want to be pub out to any amicable safe company or any waverley bane she wanted her father to take care of her money and to give her what ahe wanted to spend bat ho was perfectly firm the carriage oame to the door and edith had to go up to put on her hat and aatqao and gloves to go down for her first lesson what she was taught the reader already knows she was taken through the gates ahe was introduced to the attentive warder and she had assign ed to her one of the imallest safes exactly such a sate as antony blake had and as it happened the number was nexi to his no 4928 the reader now haa a partial notion of what mistake had ocourred in point of faot abcut a month before antony blake had mot his disappointment it had been so ordered by those minor powers who under orders ovorrule this world that he and edith lane went nearly at the same time to the amicable antony had gone simply to show himself that ho might keep up the reputation which he had acquired aa a don among dona edith had gone on her aeoond visit to out off some coupons which she bad done successfully and whloh she had carried to deposit at her bank but it had ao happened that when the brought back her little box to place it in her sale antony blake was already in that corridor of the columbarium and was opening his sate to pnt his box away the look mode some little obstaole aid he had laid his box on the floor that he might have both hands in handling the key edith had to wait a moment for the operations to be finished and as it happened she laid her box on the floor aa ahe atood by him being in fact if the reader ia carious putting on her gloves at the same moment antony touched his hab to her stooped picked np tbe box atd pub ib into his own safe without any thonght that he had made a transfer he passed ont the door tainted the warders and was gone edith put the other box into her safe and at the reader tees the change was oompleted without a thought from either party it was not till antony blake was well tin pittsburg dealing with the various torn of tubal cain who make that city one of the richest and loveliest in the world that edith one day ordered the carriage drove down to the amicable took out what she supposed to be her box and fonnd in ib antony cattaraugus and ooelrusas bond and his hundred dollar of course edith knew the had made a mistake and she instantly supposed at the usually did thateverything which was wrong was her own fault this then was the first result of her father training hex to business that she had losb all her own property and had stolen some other property of vastly more value for the girl knew nothing of the worthlossness of the cattar augus and opelousas and it was easy for her to see that whereas she had left in her box only thirty or forty thousand dollars worth of bonds the bad under her hands two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of the second issue of that unfortunate road she did not do what antony did however she took the whole parcel hundred dol lars and all and pat lb into her little satchel she put back tbe box into her bate and as quickly as she could escape the eye of the warders all of whom she thought looked on her with suspicion as if ahe were a detected thief already she rnsbed to her little conpe and bade william drive her dtrectlj home her only thought was to tell her father all that had happened and to confess that sho was a fool 01 coarse this would have been the true thing for her to do but there was unfort unately a delay her father was in chicago for two days and satan had all that time to inspire her with other counsels now al though satan might have done his worst be fore he could make edith lane do anything wrong it was easily in his power to make her do something very foolish for as henry kingaley well says when the devil cannot achieve his purposos by sending a knave he does the same by a muoh easier process and sends a fool for the more she brooded over the matter the more the poor girl persuaded herself that she bad better not at first speak to her father besides the feeling that she was a fool and had made a horrible mistake there was a little side trouble whbh increased and inoreased as she thought of ib till it at last became a giant atrite destroying all her peace it was the recollection that she had put in her box the eix letters whioh had been intrusted to her by her coubiu evelyn now this cousin evelyn had had a horrible love passage with fergus motntlre 1 have no right to oall it disgraceful though i am very glad that none ot my readers was ever so compromised it was a very bad business and evelyn had been palled out of ib only with great tact and difficulty all the com- promising letters had been brought together and should have been burned up instead of burning them evelyn haddam when she heard edith had a safe of her own bad begged her to take care of them and at her seoond visit to the safe edith had put these letters with her bonds the reader knows what had become of them now this was the only secret whioh our poor edith had ever had from her father she did not want to have these letters brought to light by any investigation whioh should be made the poor child instantly fancied herself betore a police court as a thief ahe fancied the discovery of her box opened by a judge and theae letters of evelyns and fergus read aloud and printed in all the sunday newspapers she cried over it she wrote a note to evelyn whioh she destroyed she wrote another note whioh sho destroyed also and finally said to herself that she had rather lose all her own property whloh was in the safe than have any revela tion made as to what was in the box if bhe oould only be ture that whoever had the the bonds would burn those hateful letters it seemed to her that she should be perf eotly happy in all this of couraegdlth lane waa quite wrong but as the reader will see she was in a false position which she had stumbled into really from no fault ot her own poor antony blake is the person who de serves the most consideration and sympathy from the reader he was most hospitably reoeived by old friends whom he had known at the polytechnic institute he saw all the marvels ot gas distribution of glass making of ironfounding and by mr wesb- inghoaseh kindness he was taken through tho wouderfal machine worka from which that exquisite apparatus ia produced whioh preserves every year the lives of i dare not say how many thoueand people in this world ho saw eome of the tubal cains whom he had gone to see ho showed to them tho plans of his maohine whioh were cordially commended he had one and an other suggestion made to him as to the ways for putting it upon the market bit ib was dear to him as it had been in tamworth that the destruction of the poor is their poverty and that he was in no way to get any dtc nt return for the very exquisite ooutrivanco which overybody admitted he had in band unless he himself could invest 10000 or 15000 in the complicated mach inery which was necessary for prodnoing it to bb continued 8tealihg fb0m joggefieaul watoh sorawh it is asserted that the smallest torews in the world are those used iu the produotion of watohes thus the fourth jewelwheel screw is the next thing to being invisible and to tbe naked eye it looks like dust wish a glass however it is seen to be a small screw with 260 threads to the inch and with a very fioe glass the threads may be sen quite dearly these minute sorews are 41oo0h of an inch in diameter and the heads are doublo it is also estimated that an ordinary ladys thimble would hold 100 000 of these screws no attempt is over made to oount them tho method pursued in deter mining the number blng to place 100 of them on a very delicate balance and the number of the whole amount is determined by tho weight of those after being cut the sorews are hardened and pub in frames heads up this being dono very rapidly by sense of touch in stead of by sight and the heads are then polished in an automatic machine 10000 at a time the plate on whioh the polishing ia performed is covered with oil and a grinding compound and on this tho maohine moves them rapid ly by reveraigmation what he could do pat in gaping wonder at the letters on a hebrew batcher sign here mike tis yersolf bat the folne larnln can ycz rade that now mike i cannot but if i had me hate here i belave i cud play it a cartons yarn told by an indian army officer the tale wmch i am about to relate vaa told to me many year ago by a distinguish ed c ffijer of the madras army fcr obvious reasons the names have been altered but to this day by the camp fire of the great fes tival held every year is told with bated breath the terrible tale of the jewels of juggernaut and of the vengeance of the great god 1 years ago said my friend t waa quartered at fuzurabad an important military station about 190 miles from the madras coast there were a large number of troops there of all descriptions and certainly for hall the year the life we alt led was gay and high enough unfortunately at the time i was there gambling and betting were much iu vogue and many men plunged and oame to grief over their debts ot honor of all that gay company nobody was more popular and better liked by both men and women than young fitzroy but unfortunately he lost money at the raoea tried to recover himulf at the whist table but failed got into the hands of the mawarees and got deeper and deeper into the mire of debt you could seo by his careworn and troubled expression of faoe that the poor young fellow was la real bad way i was not surprised then when one day he came to me and said r major pm done for im utterly broke i cant get any more money in the baziar and theyll run me in unless i oan geb away for a bit i mutt get to england and see it- i can raise the wind there bat goodness knows said the young fellow bitterly how i can dare ask my poor old governor major continued he i aiust get away its simply killing me you were a great friend of my father and promised to help me i wish i had stuok to your advice but itb too late now will you oome away with me j give out that we have taken ten days leave for some shooting and bee me down to the coaab if i go off alone i shall bo stopped by those cursed mawarees after some hesitation i agreed he bent in his application for leave to europo on private affurs and i gave out that x was going on a tendaya shooting expedition a week later with a couple of tongas wo had started on our loogand wearying journey to the coast where my poor yoang friend hoped to pick up a steamer to take him to- earope on the second day out we meb crowds of people tramping along men wo men and ohlldren and bhe next day still greater orowds in reply to our inquiries we were told that they were returning from the great festival of juggernaut held at pari now only some three days journey from where we were the tonga wallah kept us interested with a graphic description of tho festival and of the great god wbioh was especially remarkable for the wonderful jewels it possessed two emerald eyes of inestimable value its lips formed of tho finest rubles in the world and a necklace of priceless pearls the bun was sinking as we neared the town of pari and we could see the pinna cles of the temples rise above the trees which surrounded the place half a mile tho other side of the town btood the travellers bungalow where we intended putting up for the night during the lost twentyfour houra my young companion bad keptsllenoo and was moody and almost sullen whenever i tried to rouse him a more uooomfort- ablo meal i never ate than the dinner whioh was served np to us that evening and i was quite thankful when the poor lad said he was dead beat and wonld go off to bed my own room was on the other side of the bungalow and i took my pipe and eat smoking on the veranda the moon was just rising when i thonght i saw the figure of a european stealing along the wall of the compound strange i thought and wondered what other european could be here at the same time as idea struck me and i went across to my companions room there was nobody in it the bed was undisturbed i threw down my pipe and rushed oat into the moonlight a fsw seoond later i was out in the road and tu aed instinctively in the direction of the town running down the road i soon oame to a sandy lane which went outside the village walls in the direction of the temples tbelr pinnacles stand ing oub clear and distinob in ths moon- ugh in the distance i thonght i saw the figure of my poor ha but soon the turnings and twistings of the lane with its thick cactus hedges on each side shut him out from my view in a few minutes i was close by tho big temple compound banning up to the wall i looked over and this is what i saw an enormous courtyard of pavd stone on wbioh were lying a number of priests their white garments wrapped around their heads and bodies in the back ground was placed temple after temple bub in the centre stood one solitary shrine raised on three separate flights of steps and inside i could seo the great black god raised on three other smaller flights of colored jcsrblo steps the moonbeams ahone direotly on the god and lit up the emerald eyea and ruby lips while the pearl necklace glowed on hie huge blaok bosom not a sound was to be heard except some distant tomtomiog the festival was over and pnri hod lapned into solemn silence to my nnattembie horror i saw my companion walking right aoross tho oonrbyard nat a living oreature moved until a pariah dog rose up from near the wall gave one how and then slunk away and orouch- ed down again still no one stirrod my tongue dove to the roof of my mouth i dared nob shout even if i conld havo raised my voiae a ghastly horror took hold of mo as the idea straok me that in his mad ness my poor friend intended to save his hononr in the greater dishonor of robbing tho idol speechless i saw him mount step after step and the next moment i saw him enter the saored shrino and cross the thresh- hold which no other foot bub that of the brahmin has ever passed nine stops led np to the god one two three four five sbt he paused i tried to shout bub no sound would come he raised his haud as if to tear off the pearl necklace it was still above his reaoh his foot then touched the seventh can i ever forget the tight in the moonlight flashed oub two arms cover ed with a hundred nay two hundred daggers and olasped the daring youth to the black gods breast at the same moment the sound of a gong broke the stillness of tho night and in one moment the priests had cast off their coverings and were rush ing to the shrine two minutes later i taw the amazed and horrified priests carrying out the lifeless body of the dishonored eng llshman and i turned and fled