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226 becoming more metallic and even more difficult to hear.

There was no need for me to listen, however. Chu-Chu was at work up there. I wondered that he went to the trouble of blow-lamp and drill when in his wonderfully sensitive hands the lock of a country-house safe would have been a mere child's puzzle, to be solved in a couple of minutes at most. I decided that the safe must be a very ancient one, with a heavy, rusty old lock—the meanest sort, by the way, for the cracksman.

It made it all plain enough. Chu-Chu had run out to look the house over with an idea to a future job, but, finding the conditions so favourable, was acting on the bird-in-the-hand principle. Chu-Chu was an avaricious man, and loved his profession, and he couldn't resist the opportunity. I doubted he'd find much in the safe; and no doubt he felt the same way, but thought he might as well gather in what there was. And, mind you, it was only about three weeks earlier that he had stolen the Allerton-Stair jewels on the Calais-Dover boat. Chu-Chu was certainly a greedy hog!

I laid my bundle on a big Renaissance chest in the hall and crossed, as silent as a weasel, to the stairs. I was wearing felt-soled shoes these days, and they made no more noise on the marble than the pads of a wolf. Chu-Chu's merry little mill was turning again as I stole up the stairs, and it stopped just as I reached the first landing.

It was better to stalk him while he worked, so I waited; and as I did so there came a squeal and a giggle from somewhere in the rear of the house and