added, as his eyes fell upon the safe from which the curtain was
now removed, "you don't tell me you keep your papers in that?"

"Why not?"

"Gosh, in a wide-open contraption like that! And they reckon you
to be some spy. Why, a Yankee crook would be into that with a
can-opener. If I'd known that any letter of mine was goin' to
lie loose in a thing like that I'd have been a mug to write to
you at all."

"It would puzzle any crook to force that safe," Von Bork
answered. "You won't cut that metal with any tool."

"But the lock?"

"No, it's a double combination lock. You know what that is?"

"Search me," said the American.

"Well, you need a word as well as a set of figures before you can
get the lock to work." He rose and showed a double-radiating
disc round the keyhole. "This outer one is for the letters, the
inner one for the figures."

"Well, well, that's fine."

"So it's nit quite as simple as you thought. It was four years
ago that I had it made, and what do you think I chose for the
word and figures?"