The Accountant

Accountant Robert John Edwin Mc-Kerrow's undeniable skill with figures had brought him some doubtful rewards, among them a number of convictions for forgery and embezzlement. But a good talent is hard to suppress, and when British-born McKerrow was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in Kampala's Luzira Prison for juggling an employer's books to the tune of $14,000, he was promptly assigned to take care of the prison accounts.

It was a happy day for the inmates at Luzira. Since it was McKerrow who paid the prison's pipers, he it was who called the tunes. He established an official clubroom in his cell to beguile the prisoners' weary hours with brandy, gin, whisky, cigarettes and regularly delivered copies of British racing forms. For a while the club kept an open stock of canned tidbits, but McKerrow soon had to lock them up because one dishonest prisoner took to pinching the stores. Each evening the select prisoners would dispatch willing warders to place their bets with local bookies.

When a less obliging guard in McKerrow's prison objected to the presence of McKerrow with a woman prisoner in the warders' quarters, he was promptly transferred. Even one of the prison matrons was said to have warned all rival females: "Leave McKerrow alone. He's my man!" --although McKerrow himself vigorously denied having relationships with anyone but a dusky teen-ager on the outside named Christine Goa, whom he had made pregnant.

As his prison term drew to its close, foresighted Prisoner McKerrow took the precaution of applying for a job as an accountant in England. Last week he was reluctantly forced to write his prospective employers to tell them that he might be delayed in reporting for duty. A shortage of $1.400 in the prison books and a considerable cache of money found in Mc-Kerrow's cell led to an investigation, a trial, and the sentencing of Robert John Edwin McKerrow to 18 months more at "hard" labor.

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