FISCAL: Pregnable

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Gangsters, holocausts, thunder-gusts and earthquakes were all provided against by the architects of San Francisco's new U. S. Mint. They never thought of kids. One evening last week Paul Francis and William Gallagher, each 15, walked past the massive four-story money fortress and remembered having read it was "impregnable."

So Paul and William shinnied up a drainpipe to a window ledge. Windows were locked on the first story. Up they climbed to the second, crawled around the ledge until they found a window open. Past a guard (reading a newspaper), through attack-proof steel doors (ajar), into a room full of copper sheets (pennies in the raw), they tiptoed. One of them knocked a wrench clattering from a chair, but no guards came running. They took some copper clippings ($1.50 worth), tiptoed back to their window, threw the copper to the ground, departed as they had come.

They were arrested after they telephoned for police and told their story. "I, was a breeze," they said. "Like throwing an egg into an electric fan."

"A couple of Houdinis!"' ejaculated Peter J. Haggerty, superintendent of a mint now proven pregnable.