ed?'

'No, I did not.'

'Is it possible that there may have been some communication on the
white border of a newspaper?'

'It is, of course, possible.'

'Then will you set yourself to the task of glancing over the margin of
every newspaper, piling them away in another room when your scrutiny
of each is complete? Do not destroy anything, but we must clear out
the library completely. I am interested in the accounts, and will
examine them.'

It was exasperatingly tedious work, but after several days my
assistant reported every margin scanned without result, while I had
collected each bill and memorandum, classifying them according to
date. I could not get rid of a suspicion that the contrary old beast
had written instructions for the finding of the treasure on the back
of some account, or on the fly-leaf of a book, and as I looked at the
thousands of volumes still left in the library, the prospect of such a
patient and minute search appalled me. But I remembered Edison's words
to the effect that if a thing exist, search, exhaustive enough, will
find it. From the mass of accounts I selected several; the rest I
placed in another room, alongside the heap of the earl's newspapers.

'Now,' said I to my helper, 'if it please you, we will have Higgins
in, as I wish some explanation of these accounts.'

'Perhaps I can assist you,' suggested his lordship drawing up a chair
opposite the table on which I had spread the statements. 'I have lived
here for six months, and know as much about things as Higgins does. He
is so difficult to stop when once he begins to talk. What is the first
account you wish further light upon?'

'To go back thirteen years I find that your uncle bought a second-hand
safe in Sheffield. Here is the bill. I consider it necessary to find
that safe.'

'Pray forgive me, Monsieur Valmont,' cried the young man, springing to
his feet and laughing; 'so heavy an article as a safe should not slip
readily from a man's memory, but it did from mine. The safe is empty,
and I gave no more thought to it.'

Saying this the earl went to one of the bookcases that stood against
the wall, pulled it round as if it were a door, books and all, and
displayed the front of an iron safe, the door of which he also drew
open, exhibiting the usual empty interior of such a receptacle.

'I came on this,' he said, 'when I took down all these volumes. It
appears that there was once a secret door leading from the library
into an o