es were too common to attract
especial attention.

But Simmonds had come to see that Grady was tottering on his throne;
he realised, perhaps, that his own head was not safe; and he had made
up his mind to pin his faith to Godfrey as the only one at all likely
to lead him out of the maze. And Godfrey laid the greatest stress
upon the necessity of keeping the cabinet under lock and key; so
under lock and key it was kept. As for Grady, I do not believe that,
even at the last, he realised the important part the cabinet had
played in the drama.

But while the Boule cabinet failed to focus the attention of the
public, and while most of the reporters promptly forgot all about it,
I was amused at the pains which Godfrey took to inform the fugitive
as to its whereabouts and as to how it was guarded. Over and over
again, while the other papers wondered at his imbecility, he told how
it had been placed in the strongest cell at the Twenty-third Street
station; a cell whose bars were made of chrome-nickle steel which no
saw could bite into; a cell whose lock was worked not only by a key
but by a combination, known to one man only; a cell isolated from the
others, standing alone in the middle of the third corridor, in full
view of the officer on guard, so that no one could approach it, day
or night, without being instantly discovered; a cell whose door was
connected with an automatic alarm over the sergeant's desk in the
front room; a cell, in short, from which no man could possibly
escape, and which no man could possibly enter unobserved.

Of the Boule cabinet itself Godfrey said little, saving his story for
the denouement which he seemed so sure would come; but the details
which I have given above were dwelt upon in the _Record_, until,
happening to meet Godfrey on the street one day, I protested that he
would only succeed in frightening the fugitive away altogether, even
if he still had any designs on the cabinet, which I very much
doubted. But Godfrey only laughed.

"There's not the slightest danger of frightening him away," he said.
"This fellow isn't that kind. If I am right in sizing him up, he's
the sort of dare-devil whom an insuperable difficulty only attracts.
The harder the job, the more he is drawn to it. That's the reason I
am making this one just as hard as I can."

"But a man would be a fool to attempt to get to that cabinet," I
protested. "It's simply impossible."

"It looks impossible, I'm free to admit," he