The crooked cross

by Charles J. Dutton

The door of the library was locked, but Bartley produced from his pocket a little steel instrument, and with the ray from the flashlight on the lock quickly opened it. We slid into the dark room, closing the door behind us. Bartley turned on the light, and we gave one hurried look around the room.

I had noticed on my other visits to the library the small tables upon which had stood three boxes. They were not the ordinary type of a box, but very highly finished, with carvings of dragons and odd animals all over their sides. The wood of each of them was stained dark with age until they were almost black in color. I had noticed these three boxes as they stood on the three tables, but I had not been interested in them, chiefly because of the fact that I had been unable to lift the covers.

All three of the tables, which after all were more stands than anything else, were on the side of the desk nearest the door. Two of them were over to the extreme left, near the bookcases, the other was more in the center near the safe. It was to this one Bartley hastened, it being the one the chief had mentioned over the phone. For several moments we stood looking down at it.

The box was dingy with the years—a box three feet at least in length and several feet high. The edges were weird dragons, the tails at the corners making the little rests upon which the casket stood. Bartley reached out his hand and tried to open the massive gold lock, but without success. The casket was securely locked. He stood looking at it for a moment, then picked it up in his two hands. I could tell by the look he gave us that it was heavy. He placed it again on the stand, and then glanced around the room.

As his eyes fell upon the other two caskets, he crossed the room to look at them, we following. It needed but a glance to see that they were alike in every particular—made of the same kind of wood, with the identical dragons on each corner; and like the first one we had noticed, they were also locked. After he had lifted each one he turned to us.

“I think we had better make an effort to open that box. In a sense we have no right to do so; but I have a keen desire to know what is inside.”

When we returned to the first casket, he found it was not as easy to open as perhaps he had thought. The steel instrument which he used—a thing which would open almost any lock—in the end did its work, but not until the lock had been wrenched away, and a portion of the woodwork broken. Then as he threw up the lid, we came closer to see what was within.

There was no inner cover to the box, for the wood was very thick and another was not needed. At first glance there seemed to be nothing of value. The top was covered with yellow sheets of straw paper, thick heavy paper, which rustled as Bartley lifted them up. And then as he threw the last piece of paper away, he bent over the box and gave a little exclamation.

There seemed at first nothing to become excited over. Only a row of small tins, placed in an orderly line and packed closely together, met my eye—small tins, not very heavy nor large. But as Bartley pulled one from the interior of the box, his eyes met Ranville's and the two men nodded at the same second. Then with the bit of steel he pried off the top of the tin, gazed for a moment at its contents, and then raised it to his nose. One smell, and he passed the tin to me.

It was a small tin of very little weight. Its interior was filled with a dark, thick mass, the color of dark molasses. It did not need his words to tell me what he had found. The casket before us was filled with similar tins, and I knew that each one of them contained, as did the one I held in my hand, opium.