y the keys?
What chance or miracle would show me those? Was the key on Czerny's
person or here in one of the drawers about? How much would I have paid
to have been told that truly! But how to open it!

Now the Italian watched me with curious eyes as I went up to the door
and drew the curtain back from it. A quick glance round the room did
not show me what common sense was seeking--an iron safe in which
Czerny's keys might lie. That he would keep the key of the armoury in
the room, unless it were on his person, I had no doubt; and argument
began to tell me that, after all, a safe might not be necessary. If
alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which
were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys
would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece
of furniture, when--and this seemed beyond all reason--I saw something
shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room
I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the half
of his fortune.

"Heaven above!" said I, "if this is it--if this is it----"

And why should it not have been? News of the wreck had come to the
house like a sudden alarm leaping up in the night; the keys, which I
held with greedy fingers, might they not have been in Czerny's hands
when the bell clanged loudly through the startled corridors? I saw him,
forgetful in his very greed, serving out rifles to his willing men,
running up at hazard to be sure of the truth, leaving behind him that
which might open his house to the world forever. And in my hand the
fruit of his alarm was lying.

Ah, Heaven! it was the truth, and the door opened at my touch, and arms
for a hundred men glittered in the dim light about me.

CHAPTER XX

THE FIRST ATTACK IS MADE BY CZERNY'S MEN

We carried the shot to the stairs' head, each man working as though his
own life were the price of willing labour. If Miss Ruth had tidings of
the great good fortune the night had sent to us, she would neither stay
our hands with questions nor wait for idle answers. For a moment I saw
her, a figure to haunt a man, looking out from the door of her own
room; but a long hour passed before I changed a word with her or knew
if that which we had done would win her consent. Now, indeed, was Ruth
Bellenden at the parting of the ways, and of all in Czerny's house her
lot must have been the hardest to bear. She had blotted the page of her
old lif