The pawnshop was closed and the old couple who owned it were long asleep upstairs. Someone stood outside the street door. He reached up and disconnected the alarm, then slipped a thin bar behind the door-bolt and broke the lock. This act closed a circuit that set another system on alert, although the thief did not know of it.

Moving quickly through the shop to the cash register, he punched a button and the drawer slid open, exposing a few bills and coins. As the drawer opened, another switch was thrown. Overhead, in the shadows, a wooden mallet on a cantilever arm came straight down and smashed into the thief’s head. Instantly, a trap-door opened and the body dropped through, falling into an industrial compactor. The machine made whistling sounds as steam-powered pistons hammered and shaped, pounding, unstoppable. In the morning, a square and lumpy plastic bundle would be ready for the trash man.

The old couple upstairs would not know of the disturbance until finding, on awakening, that the shop needed a new lock.

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