"And if you don't, you may never wake again," I pointed out.
"What a dismal prophet you are! Draw up a chair and watch me."
He pulled back his shirt-sleeves, and placed his electric torch on the floor beside the cabinet. Then he paused with folded arms to contemplate this masterpiece of M. Boule.
"It _is_ a beauty," he said, at last, and then drew out the little drawers, one after another, looked them over, and placed them carefully on a chair. "Now," he added, "let us see if there is any space that isn't accounted for."
He took from his pocket a folding rule of ivory, opened it, and began a series of measurements so searching and intricate that half an hour passed without a word being spoken. Then he pulled up another chair, and sat down beside me.
"I seem to be pretty much up against it," he said, "no doubt just as the designer of the cabinet would wish me to be. The whole bottom of the desk is inclosed, and those three little drawers take up only a small part of the space. Then the back of the cabinet seems to be double--at least, there's a space of three inches I can't account for. So there's room for a dozen secret drawers, if the Montespan required so many. And now to find the combination."
He adjusted the steel gauntlet carefully to his right hand and sat down on the floor before the cabinet.
"I'll begin at the bottom," he said. "If there is any spot I miss, tell me of it."
He ran his fingers up and down the graceful legs, carefully feeling every inequality of the elaborate bronze ornamentation. Particularly did his fingers linger on every boss and point, striving to push it in or move it up or down; but they were all immovable. Then he examined the bottom of the table minutely, using his torch to illumine every crevice; but again without result.
Another half hour passed so, and when at last he came out from under the table, his face was dripping with sweat.
"It's trying work," he said, sitting down again and mopping his face. "But isn't it a beauty, Lester? The more I look at it, the more wonderful it seems."
"I told Philip Vantine I wasn't up to it, and I'm not," I said.
"Nor I, but I can appreciate it to the extent of my capacity. It's the Louis Fourteenth ideal of beauty--splendour carried to the nth degree. Look at the arabesques along the front--can you imagine anything more graceful? And the engraving--nothing cut-and-dried about that. It was done by a burin in the hands of a master--perhaps by Boule himself. I don't wonder Vantine was rather mad about it. But we haven't found that drawer yet," and he drew his chair close to the cabinet.
