“I hoped that some day or other I should be able to make a more careful
inspection of the place, but that opportunity never came, although
it seemed that I was going to have a chance a week or two before Mr.
Trasmere’s death. I managed to get the key from his neck whilst he
was in a kind of fit and take an impression, but the fit did not last
very long, and I had hardly got the key back before the old gentleman
recovered. It was a lucky thing for me that I had wiped the soap from
the key on my sleeve, for the first thing he felt for was the chain
round his neck. However, I had quite enough to work on, and I started
in to make a key that would fit the impression. That is as much as I
can tell you about the vault, which I never saw.
“I went to bed every night at ten o’clock and Mr. Trasmere used to lock
the door which shut me off from the rest of the house, so that it was
impossible for me to see what was going on at night. I complained to
him and he had a key put in a glass box in my room so that in case of
emergency I could smash the glass, and with the aid of the key, unlock
the door that separated me from the rest of the house. He didn’t even
agree to this until he was taken ill one night and I was unable to go
to his assistance.
“To open the door which locked me in was one thing, to open the little
glass cupboard and take out the key was, however, a simpler matter. I
used that key several times. The first time I used it, I heard voices
in the dining-room downstairs and wondered who it was calling at that
late hour. I hadn’t the courage to go down and see for fear I should be
detected, for there was a light in the hall. But another night, hearing
a woman’s voice, I went down, the lights being out, and saw a young
lady sitting at a table with a typewriter in front of her, tapping the
keys whilst Mr. Trasmere walked up and down, with his hands behind him,
dictating. She was the prettiest young lady I have seen in my life, and
somehow I was sure that I had seen her before. I did not recognize
her until I saw her photograph in an illustrated paper and then it
seemed to me to be impossible that it could be Miss Ursula Ardfern, the
well-known actress. I came down again the next night and this time they
were talking together and Mr. Trasmere called her ‘Ursula’ and I knew I
was right. She used to come from the theatre every night, and sometimes
he would keep her there as late as two o’clock.
“One evening, soon after she came, I crept downstairs and in my
stockinged feet, listened to them. I heard him say very sharply:
‘Ursula, where is the pin?’ The young lady answered, ‘It is there,
somewhere,’ and then I heard him grumbling and grunting and presently
he said, ‘Yes, here it is.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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