good friend, Tick-Tick! He will open the door as often as I ask him.
All he wants is his directions, and he gets them here. Look below the
dial. Here is a half-circle of steel let into the wall, and here is a
hand (called the regulator) that travels round it, just as _my_ hand
chooses. Notice, if you please, that there are figures to guide me on
the half-circle of steel. Figure I. means: Open once in the four-and-
twenty hours. Figure II. means: Open twice; and so on to the end. I set
the regulator every morning, after I have read my letters, and when I
know what my day's work is to be. Would you like to see me set it now?
What is to-day? Wednesday. Good! This is the day of our rifle-club;
there is little business to do; I grant a half-holiday. No work here to-
day, after three o'clock. Let us first put away this portfolio of
municipal papers. There! No need to trouble Tick-Tick to open the door
until eight to-morrow. Good! I leave the dial-hand at eight; I put back
the regulator to I.; I close the door; and closed the door remains, past
all opening by anybody, till to-morrow morning at eight."

Obenreizer's quickness instantly saw the means by which he might make the
clock-lock betray its master's confidence, and place its master's papers
at his disposal.

"Stop, sir!" he cried, at the moment when the notary was closing the
door. "Don't I see something moving among the boxes--on the floor
there?"

(Maitre Voigt turned his back for a moment to look. In that moment,
Obenreizer's ready hand put the regulator on, from the figure "I." to the
figure "II." Unless the notary looked again at the half-circle of steel,
the door would open at eight that evening, as well as at eight next
morning, and nobody but Obenreizer would know it.)

"There is nothing!" said Maitre Voigt. "Your troubles have shaken your
nerves, my son. Some shadow thrown by my taper; or some poor little
beetle, who lives among the old lawyer's secrets, running away from the
light. Hark! I hear your fellow-clerk in the office. To work! to work!
and build to-day the first step that leads to your new fortunes!"

He good-humouredly pushed Obenreizer out before him; extinguished the
taper, with a last fond glance at his clock which passed harmlessly over
the regulator beneath; and closed the oaken door.

At three, the office was shut up. The notary and everybody in the
notary's employment, with one exception, went to see the rifle-sho