The door of one vault was half open. Inside a man was sitting at a table counting diamonds. A pile of white diamonds on a piece of brown paper! Stuck on the wall with the splash of a gum brush was--surprising sight--a coy Kirchner girl adjusting the suspender at the extremity of a long, shining, slim silk leg. On we went down the corridor, the secretary pointing out the vault of the Duke of This and Lord That, making my head reel with a story of title deeds and heirlooms and treasures beyond price. Another door opened and the owner came out. At first I thought he was about to give us some of the gold plate with which the room was vulgarly full. "Could you," he said, "lend me a pencil?" We gave him one. On another floor I found the ordinary safes, much less spectacular than the vaults, but, I think, more interesting. Here it is that men and women hide their smaller treasures. You can have quite a nice little safe big enough to take a pair of shoes for twenty-five shillings a year. I entered an avenue of them, looked at their clumsy hinges and their astonishing locks, wondering what mysteries they contain. In how many of them lie letters that would break up homes? In how many are documents that would explain why So-and-So never married? In how many of them are the riches of people whose friends think them penniless? In how many are merely silly things? "I think the strangest thing we guarded," said the secretary, "was a penny. For thirty years a man paid three pounds a year to guard that penny. No; he was not mad--only superstitious. He believed that if he lost that penny he would have terrible ill-luck. When he first deposited it he was poor, but he died worth a hundred thousand pounds, and his executors then came and took away his mascot." Another strange treasure was the hoof of a Derby winner. The owner made a fortune from his victory, and when the horse died his wife had the hoof mounted, and they kept it for years in a special safe. Hundreds of safes in every deposit vault are filled with the jewels of wealthy women. Now and then the owners come and look at them, and sometimes before a ball or a reception they take them away for a night or two. Hundreds also contain the treasures of women who do not seem wealthy. What they contain no one knows. Once when a safe that had not been claimed for twenty years was broken open--it belonged to an elderly spinster--inside were found bundles of faded letters tied up with faded ribbon, all that was left of an old romance. What other secrets lie hidden underground in such cold, tiled avenues--what strange human stories that will never be known?