With Roberts to Pretoria: A Tale of The South African War

by G. A. Henty

"A very good plan, Simmonds. It will be an unpleasant job, anyhow. Wait a minute."

On going to the dining-room he returned with two bottles of whisky. Hans and Peter assisted in carrying the bodies outside, and then offered to bring pails of water and remove the blood-stains in the hall, and after that to assist in carrying the bodies away.

By this time the servant had come down and relighted the lamps in the drawing-room, and Yorke and Mr. Chambers went in there.

"I wonder, sir," Yorke said, "that you were not afraid to keep so large a sum in your house."

"I do not generally do so. As the gold is melted down, it is brought here for safety, and once a week it is sent to the bank, so that the amount seldom exceeds two thousand ounces. But this time it has been altogether different. When I saw that Kruger was bent upon war, I put all hands on to get the richest stuff in our reserves. The consequence was that the weekly output was five times as large as usual. I sent the ordinary amount to the bank, keeping the other by me, and intended to send it all down at once by rail in boxes with false marks on them, or if I could not do that, to keep it here till the war was over. Kruger's sudden ultimatum took me, as well as everyone else, by surprise. I was certain then that I could not get it down, and that if I sent it to the bank, Kruger and his people would lay hands upon it, as, in fact, they did with what I had sent in.

"It was only a few of the officials in the smelting-room who had any idea of the output, and even these could hardly have told what amount I sent into the bank. It is clear, however, that one of them must have carelessly mentioned it, and that these fellows who made this attack must have discovered, perhaps from my servants who used to help to load the van, or from one of the guards who had accompanied it to unload it at the bank, that as the amount sent in was about the same as usual, there must remain a very large sum indeed hidden. I had really very little fear of the house being broken into, but in order to prevent any suspicion of there being money here, I discharged the men who always kept watch round the house at night at the same time that I paid off all the other hands, except the engineers who kept the pumping-engine at work to keep down the water in the mines. Then I relied upon the fact that burglars getting into the house would have difficulty in finding the safe, and still more difficulty in opening it.

"I had no doubt as to the honesty of my servants, who alone knew its position; but they did not know the manner in which it was protected. It is situated under my study, which is at the back of this room. The safe is an extremely strong one, of alternate sheets of steel and iron, and was made specially for me. It opens at the top, and you get at it by taking up the carpet in the study and lifting a trap-door. The vault in which the safe stands is two feet each way wider than the safe, and as this stands in the centre, there is a foot of vacant space on each side of it. Round the upper part of the safe there is a sliding apparatus by which a stout steel case, like a bottomless box, can be drawn up to the level of the trap-door. This, however, is only done when the safe is to be opened.

"In the next place, I have a communication from what I may call the strong-room both with the pipe which brings water for the garden and with a large cistern upstairs. Thus, the strong-room is kept filled with water, and the safe is therefore surrounded above as well as on its four sides with water. When I want to open the safe, I go into the study by myself, lift the heavy trap-door, which is cased with an inch of steel, but is easily moved by means of a counter-poise, and then, with the aid of a lever in a secret closet, push up this box until it is level with the floor. I may say that the safe is three inches wider each way than the trap-door. The door of the safe itself being one inch narrower each way than the trap-door, opens through it.

"Having got this box, which is perfectly water-tight, into its place, I work another handle in a secret cupboard and pump out the water in the frame above the safe, and then open the door of the safe, and it is now ready for the men to come in and store the gold away. When they have left I close the door of the safe, lower the frame to its place, and the safe is at once covered with a foot of water. Thus, you see, burglars would have a succession of difficulties. They would, in the first place, be obliged to cut through the steel of the trap-door, then they would find, to their surprise, water immediately underneath them, and until this was removed it would be impossible for them to blow in the door of the safe. They would naturally try to bucket it out, but as it would come in again as fast as they did so, they would gain nothing by it. They might try to blow in the safe with waterproof cartridges, but I doubt whether they would succeed.

"The lid is of immense strength. If they did succeed in bursting it there is another equally strong a foot lower, and this also would have to be destroyed. Even then the holes made would not be sufficient to let them through, and the only way they could possibly get the gold out would be to try and fish out the boxes with a hook at the end of a pole—again an almost impossible task, as the boxes are square, very heavy, and packed tightly together, so that there would be nothing to get hold of. I may say that I got the idea from reading, in the time of the Commune of Paris, how the bank was able to protect the specie in its vaults by filling them with water from the mains. I worked out the details myself, and I think I improved on the original, though that was good enough—for it baffled all the efforts of the mechanics and engineers of the Commune to get at the money."