MILLIONS IN STEEL VAULT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17345, 27 September 1924, Page 17

MILLIONS IN STEEL VAULT.

BANK FOR BURGLARS AND MILLIONAIRES. SPECIAL SAFE FOR “ LUCKY PENNY.” LONDON, August 10. Every night at six o'clock huge metal doors in a concrete and steellined building iu the City of London shut with a clang and remain immovable for fifteen hours. Behind them, in 10,000 safes and strong-rooms, lie securities, deeds and “liquid assets” to tic- estimated value of mill ions, They arc the. stronghold doors of the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, and in case their two fons of solid steel and their two time-locks, in addition to the ordinary means of fastening, arc not sufficient to keep the treasures they guard sale against invasion, armed guards patrol tho building throughout the night. Th© grimly business-like vaults ar© the meeting-place of all sorts and conditions of men and women; burglars and millionaires have used them—anybody with a treasure to guard or a secret to hide. There is the “diamond queue” of merchants from Hatton Garden, who prefer to place their stock •in the vaults every night than to trust it to a safe in tlieir unguarded offices. Millionaires deposit their nrtistic and bibliographic treasures in the strong rooms. One paid £2OOO for a special door with two combination locks to bo fitted to the room he rented. WOMEN’S TREASURE-HOU SE. Lawyers keep their most important documents in the safes, and women store their jewels there and come and gloat over them week by week. ° And the-© is .omance, too. Lor th! i tv vears one. uan rented a sdall safe, for "which i.e pr.id £3 3s a year, for j tie sole purpose of keeping Lis “lucky ’ penny” beyond all chance of loss. “I do not 1 now what virtue was iu i that penny,” said tee secret?ry of th© fcrafe Deposit yesterday, ‘‘but I <lo know that when our renter first came iie was in very humble circumstances, but when he died he was worth well over £IOO,OOO, and his limit's took the , penny away.” Occasionally renters leave their safes for many years, and in con r so of time the officials open the and sometimes stumble on bidden secrets. There is a bundle of letters taken from a safe rented long ago by a woman who disappeared—what mystery, what romance, would those letters reveal to one who held the key!