It was not quite the sort of thing he had expected.

If it had been a combination lock he had intended to tear away the woodwork covering it, pad the floor with the bed mattress, and then pry it over on its face, to chisel away the cement that he knew would lie under its vulnerable sheet-iron bottom.
But it was an ordinary, old-fashioned lock and key "Mennlicher," Durkin at the first glance had seen--the sort of strong box which a Third avenue cigar seller, at home, would scarcely care to keep on his premises.

Yet this was the deposit vault for which hotel guests, such as Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, paid ten francs a day extra.
The sound of footsteps passing down the hallway caused the intruder to draw back and listen.

He turned quickly, waited, and came to a quick, new decision.

Before doing so, however, he re-examined the room more critically.
This Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff was, obviously, a man of taste.
He was also a man of means--and Durkin wondered if in that fact alone lay the reason why a certain young Belgian adventuress had followed him from Tangier to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar still on to the Riviera.