f habitually; I
find it a great resource and comfort. I lived for a long time in a
country where all the ladies smoked."

I took a cigarette, lit a match, and handed her a light; she lit her
cigarette with a grace born of long habit.

"Now," she said, as I puffed contentedly, "I can tell you what I have
to say in comfort."

I certainly thought I had made a good exchange from the raw air of the
street to this comfortable fireside.

"It will not interest you now," she continued, "to hear the reasons
which have moved me to live here so long as I have done; that is a
story which would take too long to tell you. All the preamble I wish
to make to my remark is this; that the favour I shall ask of you is one
that you can fulfil without the slightest injury to your honour. On
the contrary it will be an act of kindness and humanity which no one in
the world could object to."

"I feel sure of that," I interposed with a bow, "you need not say
another word on that point."

I was really quite falling in love with the old lady, and her old-world
courtesy of manner.

"I will then come straight to the point," she proceeded, taking a
curious key from her pocket; it was a key with a finely-wrought handle
in which was the letter C.

"I want you to open a secret drawer in this room, which, since its
hiding-place was contrived, has been known only to me and to one other,
the workman who made it, a Belgian long since dead. Please take this
key."

I took it.

"Now," she continued, "cast your eyes round this room, and see if you
can detect where the secret safe is hidden."

I looked round the room as she wished, and could see nothing which gave
me the slightest clue to it.

"No," I said, "I can see nothing which has any resemblance to a safe."

She laughed, and, rising from her seat, turned to the fireplace and
touched a carved rose in the frame of the handsome over-mantel;
immediately the looking-glass moved up by itself in its frame,
disclosing, apparently, the bare wall.

"Please watch me," proceeded the old lady.

She placed her finger on a certain part of the pattern of the wall
paper beneath, and the whole of that part of the pattern swung forward;
behind was a safe, apparently of steel, evidently a piece of foreign
workmanship.

"Please place the key in the lock, and turn it," she asked, "but do not
open the safe."

I regarded her proceedings with much interest, and rose from my chair
and did as she asked.