coins.

The detective examined everything carefully, discovering among the coins
in the little bowl a five-franc piece of the time of Carlo Alberto, and
a forty-franc piece of the Provisory Government of Lombardy. "The
Engineer-in-Chief has preserved these coins with extraordinary care,"
said the detective; "henceforth we will preserve them." He closed the
drawer, and, without opening the others, returned the key to Franco.

Then he went out into the corridor and paused, undecided. The Receiver
thought he intended to go down, and as the corridor was nearly dark, and
the stairs were not visible, he, who was acquainted with the house,
started towards the right in the direction of the stairs, saying: "This
way." The room where the sabre lay was on the left.

"Wait," said the adjunct. "Let us look in here, also." And turning, he
pushed open the fatal door. Luisa, who had been the last in the
procession, pressed forward, now that the supreme moment had arrived.
Her heart, which had beat furiously while the adjunct hesitated, now
became quiet as by a miracle, and she was cool, daring, and ready.

"Who sleeps here?" the detective asked her.

"No one. My uncle's parents used to occupy this room, but they have been
dead these forty years, and no one has slept here since."

The room contained two beds, a sofa, and a chest of drawers. This the
detective signed to the gendarmes to open. They tried it, but it was
locked. "I think I have the key," said Luisa with the utmost
indifference. She went down, accompanied by a gendarme, and returned
immediately with a little basket of keys which she offered to the
detective.

"I do not know the key," she said. "It is never used. It must be one of
these."

He tried them all, but in vain. Then the Receiver tried, and then
Franco. The right one was not there.

"Send to S. Mamette for the lock-smith," said Luisa, calmly. The
Receiver looked at the detective as if to say: "It seems to me
unnecessary," but the detective turned his back upon him and exclaimed
to Luisa: "This key must be somewhere!"

The chest of drawers, a piece of _rococo_ furniture, had metal handles
to each drawer. One of the gendarmes, the strongest, tried to force the
drawers open. He did not succeed either with the top one or with the
second. Just at that moment Luisa remembered that she had seen the sabre
in the third drawer, together with a roll of drawings. The gendarme
seized the handles of the third. "This on