Cocky Locksmith

When cocky Locksmith Charles Courtney of Manhattan, founder-president of the American Association of Master Locksmiths, sailed last month for Europe, he said he was off to pick a lock, where or for whom he did not know. Observers guessed it might be a rusted lock on a treasure chest hauled from the sunken Egypt by the Italian salvage ship Artiglio II (TIME, June 20). Never having met the lock that could resist him, Master Courtney, who first learned his trade at the door of his mother's jam closet, expected no trouble. Last week, back in Manhattan, he told of his lock-picking jaunt.

As his ship neared Europe a wireless message came telling him to proceed to Bremen. There an engineer from the Artiglio II gave him minute descriptions of two safes to be opened by divers 400 ft. below the surface. A third had been opened with an acetylene torch, damaging the contents. Courtney gave the engineer a "template" (outline pattern) of what the lock probably was like, where it should be drilled. His templates opened one safe, failed on the other until he had flown to Calais and drawn another. His employers told him to come back in August when there would be more locks to pick. Then Locksmith Courtney had another adventure. From Bremen he was taken to a subcellar of the late Prince Heinrich's palace in Kiel, shown a safe untouched since 1918. Breathing ancestral Hohenzollern mustiness, lit by flashlights, he twiddled until he heard the tumblers fall on the lock, telling him the safe was ready to be opened. Professionally satisfied, he determined to have locksmith's fun. He told his employers he could not open the safe without a policeman's permission. A policeman was produced. Still Courtney twiddled. He twiddled the dials all day. At nightfall, as his employers' eyes popped, he opened the safe. As the door swung open, his employers hustled cocky Locksmith Courtney away. He did not see what treasure it was he had laid bare.

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