Before cameras, a night watchman walked a round with a clock on a strap, and at fourteen stations round the store there was a key on a chain that he turned in the clock to prove he had been there, and the clock printed the station and the time on a paper disc. The clock is in a case in the staff corridor. The keys are still on their chains. Every morning the disc in the clock has fourteen punches on it, in order, at the times the round took, and the clock has not left its case.
I am the head of security at a department store and the watchman's clock in the staff corridor is history, and it is also running.
The clock.
A round brass thing on a leather strap, with a paper disc inside, and fourteen keys on chains at fourteen points round the building, in the basement, on every floor, on the roof. The watchman walked the round with the clock and turned each key in it and the clock punched the disc with the station number and the time, and in the morning the manager read the disc and knew the building had been walked. It was retired in 1988 when the cameras came in, and it is in a case in the corridor with a card that says what it was.
Every morning the disc has a round on it.
The round.
Fourteen punches. Station one, the staff entrance, at eleven. Two, the basement, at eleven ten. And so on, round the building, in the order the stations are, at the intervals a man takes walking between them with a torch and looking at everything, and the last, fourteen, the roof, at ten past two, and then one again, at half past two, the end of the round, and then nothing until the next night.
The clock is in its case. The case is locked. The disc, which I change, because otherwise it is punched over, is punched.
The keys are on their chains at their stations. I have watched one. Station six, the third floor, by the stockroom. At ten to midnight the key on its chain lifted, turned, the quarter turn it turns in the clock, and dropped, and swung, and I was standing next to it, and the clock was in its case five floors away, and in the morning the disc said six, ten to twelve.
What has been checked.
The clock, taken out of the case and put in the safe. The disc was punched in the safe.
The round, walked, by me, at eleven, from station one. I walked it at the pace the punches suggest and I got to each station within a minute of the time on the disc, and at each one the key was moving when I arrived. Lifting, turning, dropping. A step ahead of me all the way round, so that at every station I arrived to a key that was swinging on its chain, and at the roof, station fourteen, in the cold, the key turned as I came through the door, and swung, and from the far side of the roof, by the parapet, I heard a man clear his throat and start back down.
Who.
The store's last watchman. Thirty years on the round. Retired when the cameras came and the round was stopped, and the oldest staff say he had not thought much of cameras, and had said that a camera does not try a door, and that he had died a few years after, and that his family had asked for one of the keys to be buried with him, and the store had said yes, and had cut another for the station, and that was station six.
He is walking it. Every night. All fourteen. Trying every door. And the punch at station six is made with a key that is in a coffin.
What is done about it.
The disc is punched and I change it and I have a drawer of discs, a year of rounds, and the insurers, who came to inspect the cameras, saw the clock in its case and asked what it was and I told them, and one of them asked whether it still worked, and I said, every night, and the other one laughed, and the first one did not.
What I do.
I run security.
The round was read in the morning. That was the point of it. A manager took the disc out and looked at the fourteen punches and initialled it and put it in a file, and the initialling was the store telling the watchman it knew he had walked. Nobody has initialled a disc since 1988.
So I do. Every morning I take the disc out of the clock and I read it, all fourteen, and I check the times against the round, and I initial it, and I date it, and I put it in the file, which I have started, and which is in the safe, and I have written on the front of the file his name, and the words, night round, and the year.
The disc has changed. Station six is still punched, ten to twelve, third floor, by a key that is buried. But at the end of the round, after station one at half past two, there is a fifteenth punch, which the clock cannot make because there is no fifteenth key, and it is not a station number. It is the mark the clock makes when the watchman turns the master key in it at the end of the round to say the round is done, and the master key was the manager's, and it is in my desk, and it has not moved, and the disc says, every morning, round complete, and I initial that too.