Picking Jones's Locker

The cockiest picklock in the U. S. last week signed a Europe-bound steamship's register: Charles Courtney, New York. N. Y., master locksmith, founder-president of the American Association of Master Locksmiths. His errand was to pick open some treasure chests plucked from Davy Jones's lockerby whom he would not say, from where he could not say. His cautious employers had merely supplied him expense money and instructions to have his passport visaed for England, France and Germany. When his ship neared Europe he would receive wireless orders for debarkation. The chests he was to open might have been retrieved from the sunken Egypt from which Italian salvagers last week first announced, then denied that they had lifted $45,000 in gold bars and $500,000 in cancelled Indian paper rupees. Or the chests might have come from other sunken vessels.

Master Courtney was positive that he could open the chests. Declared he: "There isn't a lock made that hasn't its weak point." In his Manhattan shop, whose basement is the Grand Lodge Room of his A. A. M. L., he has a million keys, thousands of locks, a model airplane built entirely of lock parts and keys. The airplane's radio and engine function. Master Courtney declares that he can fit a key to any motor car if he has the manufacturer's number and if he is sure that the applicant for a key is honest. The constitution of the A. A. M. L. forbids trafficking with crooks.

"If I wanted to be a crook I could make plenty of cash," declared he to the Press. "None of the crooks in this country knows how to do these things. It took me 20 years to learn what I know about locks. No crook is going to take that trouble. It was different in the old days. [He is in his 40's.] There wasn't so much to know then. Even a child could learn how to pick a warder lock." He learned to pick, and later make, locks by stealing into his mother's jam closet on their Virginia farm.

The Warder lock, which Master Courtney scorns, consists essentially of a solid bolt with a notch or peg on its stem. The key engages the notch or peg and thus slides the bolt to or fro. Almost anything which can pass through the keyhole can throw this simple lock. To impede such easy passage a trifle, locksmiths sometimes notch the keyhole. Ordinarily only keys with grooved bits which fit the notches can get through such keyholes.

Lever locks are better. They contain two or more thin, spring-action levers. Each lever must be raised to a certain, precise position before they will permit the key to engage the bolt. Ordinarily only keys whose bits are properly notched to touch and raise all the levers simultaneously can move the bolt.

Yet more difficult to pick is the cylinder lock which Linus Yale invented in 1848. This contains a cylindrical plug into which fits a small, flat, notched key. The cylinder also contains small holes (usually five) bored in a line along the key slot. In those holes are small, loose pins. When the proper key is in the slot the pins fit into the notches and are flush with the surface of the plug. This permits the turning of the plug (and key) and the throwing of the bolt. If the improper key is used, plug pins are pushed up into the barrel of the lock and the plug kept from turning. Or loose pins in the barrel may drop into the plug holes. This also prevents turning.*

*An Egyptian drawbar lock, dug from the Palace of Khorsabad at Nineveh, was operated 4,000 years ago by such loose pins. The huge wooden key which raised the pins was doubtless like Isaiah's, who declared: "And the key of the House of David will I lay upon his shoulder." (Isaiah XXII, 22)

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