He adjusted the steel gauntlet carefully to his right hand and sat down on the floor before the cabinet.
"I'll begin at the bottom," he said. "If there is any spot I miss, tell me of it."
He ran his fingers up and down the graceful legs, carefully feeling every inequality of the elaborate bronze ornamentation. Particularly did his fingers linger on every boss and point, striving to push it in or move it up or down; but they were all immovable. Then he examined the bottom of the table minutely, using his torch to illumine every crevice; but again without result.
Another half hour passed so, and when at last he came out from under the table, his face was dripping with sweat.
"It's trying work," he said, sitting down again and mopping his face. "But isn't it a beauty, Lester? The more I look at it, the more wonderful it seems."
"I told Philip Vantine I wasn't up to it, and I'm not," I said.
"Nor I, but I can appreciate it to the extent of my capacity. It's the Louis Fourteenth ideal of beauty—splendour carried to the nth degree. Look at the arabesques along the front—can you imagine anything more graceful? And the engraving—nothing cut-and-dried about that. It was done by a burin in the hands of a master—perhaps by Boule himself. I don't wonder Vantine was rather mad about it. But we haven't found that drawer yet," and he drew his chair close to the cabinet.
"I'd point out one thing to you, Godfrey," I said: "if you go on poking about with the fingers of both hands, as you've been doing, you are just as apt to get struck on the left hand as on the right."
"That's true," he agreed. "Stop me if I forget."
There were three little drawers in the front of the table, and these Godfrey had removed. He inserted his hand into the space from which he had taken them, and examined it carefully. Then, inch by inch, he ran his fingers over the bosses and arabesques with which the sides and top of the table were incrusted. It seemed to me that, if the secret drawer were anywhere, it must be somewhere in this part of the cabinet, and I watched him with breathless interest. Once I thought he had found the drawer, for a piece of inlay at the side of the table seemed to give a little under the pressure of his fingers; but no hidden spring was touched; no drawer sprang open; no poisoned fangs descended.