"I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the
lock for me."
"And your police, they would interfere, would they not?"
"Oh no! Not if they knew the man was properly employed."
"Then," he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt
is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as
to whether or not that employer has a good conscience or a bad one.
Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever, oh so clever, in
reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No,
no, my friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty
houses in this your London, or of any city in the world, and if you do
it as such things are rightly done, and at the time such things are
rightly done, no one will interfere. I have read of a gentleman who
owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer
to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar come and broke
window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in
front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of
the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it,
and put up big notice. And when the day come he sell off by a great
auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go
to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he
pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police
and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come
back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where
his house had been. This was all done en regle, and in our work we
shall be en regle too. We shall not go so early that the policemen
who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange. But we shall
go after ten o'clock, when there are many about, and such things would
be done were we indeed owners of the house."
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