He thought it, therefore, better to employ a different expedient. He collected as many keys as he could, and tried all of them during one of those delightful hours which Rosa and Cornelius passed together at the grating of the cell.
Two of the keys entered the lock, and one of them turned round once, but not the second time.
There was, therefore, only a little to be done to this key.
Boxtel covered it with a slight coat of wax, and when he thus renewed the experiment, the obstacle which prevented the key from being turned a second time left its impression on the wax.
It cost Boxtel two days more to bring his key to perfection, with the aid of a small file.
Rosa’s door thus opened without noise and without difficulty, and Boxtel found himself in her room alone with the tulip.
The first guilty act of Boxtel had been to climb over a wall in order to dig up the tulip; the second, to introduce himself into the dry-room of Cornelius, through an open window; and the third, to enter Rosa’s room by means of a false key.
Thus envy urged Boxtel on with rapid steps in the career of crime.
Boxtel, as we have said, was alone with the tulip.
A common thief would have taken the pot under his arm, and carried it off.