| Show atae 4 ne burglars one great mistake ci small piece of carelessness that thai put a temporary stop 4 promising career folly of trying to do good work with second class material think now you said the retired burglar that a man in my business if anybody would test his tools before bringing them into use and so take no chances with them you would sure but the best men neglect this sometimes and I 1 did once and came to grief tile the lip of my old jimmy had got chapped and rather than have it drawn out and tempered re I 1 had a new one made I 1 had been doing pretty well along about then and I 1 felt that I 1 could afford it to say nothing to the common sense of having only the best tools to work with that new jimmy was a beauty to look at and well balanced and good under the hand fine and perfect in every way apparently and I 1 never tested it I 1 tried it on a safe I 1 knew of that seemed to be just waiting for somebody to come along and crack it this safe stood at the top landing of a pair of stairs that led up to the second story of a two story detached building that was used for a factory of some sort and that stood on the same lot with the house of the owner in a small country town I 1 suppose they put it out there so they could tumble it downstairs handy in case of fire it seem much of a safe it was a loose jointed sort of ram shackle looking old safe compared with what they build nowadays but it turn out as easy as I 1 thought it was going to it stood with its door toward the office room on that second floor and with the hinged edge of the door back from and the opening edge toward the top of the stairs so I 1 had to stana with my heels right on the edge of them the top stop step of the stairs to get at it 1 I 1 wedged the door out a little to get it started away from the door frame and then I 1 got tile the now new jimmy in and began prying but the old safe as I 1 was saying turned out to he be tougher than I 1 had expected and the first thing I 1 knew there was a crack and a break not in th the esafe safe door but in the handle of my now new jimmy a flaw in the steel and standing as I 1 was on that very top step and leaning out over the stairs at the moment away I 1 went clean to the bottom i it was plumb daylight when I 1 came to and then I 1 was on a work bench on the first floor of this little factory with the doctor bending over me on ono one side and the owner of the factory on the other the owner had found me senseless at the bottom of tho the stairs and there I 1 hadrain had lain till ho he picked me up ho he did his first duty to me by sending for the doctor and later ho he did his duty to the community it was easy to do that with the handle of my broken jimmy beside me at the foot of the stairs the part that matched mat clied it sticking in the safe and my old bullseye bull soyo standing on the top of the strong box it was some years after that before I 1 got a chance to use another jimmy at all but I 1 never repeated the mistake I 1 made with that one |
