She watched his finger, however, count the cracks from a knot in the wood.
Then he pressed a certain spot, and one of the blocks sprang up a little way and was easily removed.

Beneath it was the steel lid of a small coffer, with two keyholes.
"This is my hiding-place," he said calmly, "and these," he added, "are the keys." He laid before her two keys of curious device, and he took from a drawer in his desk a thin chain of platinum and gold.
"Now," he said, "you are going to be the guardian of these keys.

You are going to wear this chain around your neck all the time, and the keys are going in here." He drew from his pocket a gold locket, and touching the spring showed her that inside, instead of any place for a photograph, were little embedded pads of velvet, shaped for the keys.

He placed them in and hung the locket around her neck.

She looked at it, half terrified.
"I do not understand," she said, "why you trust me with this.