RUDE theatre, improvised in an empty store room; a rough stage, floored with bridge plank; upon the stage a strong steel safe like those used in country banks, and an expert cracksman to crack it. The principal performer is not a robber—that is, a burglar. He is the representative of the Startler Alarm Company. This company undertakes to put intricate and elaborate alarm systems into banks and other buildings, which, when disturbed by midnight prowlers, will wake and warn the sleeping city, as an Æolian harp wakes and sings in the rising wind.
The repertoire of the "Startler" depends altogether upon the amount of money the bank, village, or city is willing to give up. A cheap one will cause an electric bell to ring in the room over the bank where the cashier sleeps. A better one will sound a gong in the street. A still more elaborate system will sound a number of gongs, and if those interested could spare the price, no doubt the company would provide a system that, in addition to sounding the gongs, would ring the fire, church, and school bells, and assemble the Vigilance Committee (which is an important part of the system) in the public square. However, the man had not come to show the system at this performance, but the necessity for it.
The day was dark in the smoke-veiled city. The lamps had been turned down, lighting the theatre dimly, for the thing must be realistic. The struggling robber—the real professional burglar—must often work in absolute darkness, so this make-believe robber must not have too much light.
Presently the big doors began to cry and moan, as the audience began to assemble. A man in morning dress received each guest at the door, smiled, and waved him forward to a seat. They were all men, and nearly all bankers. There were millionaires among them, poor, unhappy millionaires, who had come through the storm and snow and sleet to see a man melt a hole in a safe, and incidentally, to hear the man tell of the wondrous workings of the "Startler" alarm, which was to guard the millionaire's millions and give him a rest.
The show had not been advertised in the regular way. A neat card had been posted to prominent banking houses in the city and to country bankers round about, so that every man present was intensely interested in the performance. There were bank managers, cashiers, paying tellers and clerks, all waiting eagerly for the show to begin.
In the front row of chairs there were three men who were not bankers: a detective, a burglar, and a struggling author, who sees the inside of a bank only once in a great while, when he goes in to cash a cheque that comes to him from some one of the magazines.
Presently, when about half of the chairs had been filled, a nervous man in a fur coat pounded the floor with a heavy stick, after the way of the gallery god, and immediately a man came from a rear room, leaped lightly upon the stage, hit the safe a rap or two with a hard hammer, and asked any man in the audience who might doubt the tangibility of the strong box to come forward and examine it.
"Hit it where you are going to burn it," said a man in the front row, and the showman did so. That seemed to satisfy the company. At all events no one went up to test the armour, and the showman went on with the show.
Of the apparatus, there was a switch-board to begin with, a positive electric wire attached to a carbon, clamped to a stick, a negative wire attached to the safe, an asbestos-lined sheet-iron box with a hole in the centre, also attached to the safe, and a man who knew how to work the machinery.
The metal did not melt as rapidly as the expert had predicted, but it surely melted, and in a short while a small hole appeared in the face of the safe.
The man said it would be foolish to make another hole, for if one hole could be made, any number of holes of any size could be made, and the audience consented silently to what the man said.
Now, to guard against these enterprising burglars, who have only to harness an electric light wire and go to work (and there are electric lights wherever there are civilised men and money), the Startler Alarm Company was prepared to put in a system that would call the people to arms. As a matter of fact, the "Startler" could not catch a thief, but it would wake the inhabitants up, and that was something.