e.

The run of luck did not hold in respect to this; there was no key; and
the combination dial was smug with ill-grounded confidence in its own
inviolable integrity. Still (Lanyard told it) it could hardly be
expected to know, it had yet to be dealt with by the shade of the Lone
Wolf.

Amused by the conceit, Lanyard laid hold of the knob with steady,
delicate fingertips that had not yet, in spite of years of honourable
idleness, forgotten their cunning. Then he flattened an ear to the cold
face of the safe. To his informed manipulation the dial whirled,
paused, reversed, turned all but imperceptibly, while the hidden
mechanism clicked, ground and thudded softly, speaking a living
language to his hearing. In three minutes he sat back on his heels,
grasped the T-handle, turned it, had the satisfaction of hearing the
bolts slide back into their sockets, and opened the door wide.

But the racked pigeonholes held nothing to interest him whose one aim
was the recovery of the Montalais jewels. The safe was, in fact,
dedicated simply to the storage of documents.

"Love letters!" Lanyard mused with a grimace of weariness. "And each
believed, no doubt, she cared too much for him to hold her power to
compromise him. Good Lord! what vanity is man's!"

Then the consideration offered that property of real value
might be hidden behind those sheaves of papers. He selected a
pigeonhole at hazard, and emptied it of several bundles of letters, all
neatly bound with tape or faded ribbon and clearly docketed. It held
nothing else whatever. But his eye was caught by a great name endorsed
on the face of one of the packages; and reading what else was written
there his brows rose high while his lips shaped a soundless whistle. If
an inference were fair, Liane had kept not only such documents as gave
her power over others. Lanyard wondered if it were possible he held in
his hand an instrument to bend the woman to his will....

Suddenly he put out a hand and switched off the light, a gesture quite
involuntary, simple reaction to the muffled thump of a chair overturned
on the floor above.

Sounds of scuffling followed, as if Liane were dancing to no music with
a heavy-footed partner. Then a groan....

His hands moved so rapidly and deftly that, although he seemed to rise
without a second's delay, the safe was closed and the combination
locked when he did so, the buffet door was shut and its key in his
pocket.

This time Lanyard ascend