She thrust the small key into the lock and turned it. It stuck a little and she pushed it in and out, and turned it to the right and left with almost feverish haste, till she heard the click of the tiny bolt, and she lifted the folding board towards her on the table. Her fingers sought the little faded silk tag by which the second lid was to be lifted, but it must have been jammed in when she had last shut the case. She took the first thing that lay under her hand, a sharp steel letter-opener in the shape of a sword, and she forced the point a little way in between the lid and the edge of the ebony case, pressing hard on the little gold hilt. The lid flew up suddenly on its hinges and fell forwards towards her.
Then her heart failed her. The desk was empty.
She uttered a sort of faltering little cry, and she fell back in her chair with starting eyes and parted lips, her hands still grasping the open lid. In the wild confusion of her horror and the frantic effort of her memory to recall something that had never been, she was mad for a moment. Had she burnt everything and forgotten? Or had she put the papers in some safer place, and lost all recollection of what she had done?
That was impossible. She never forgot what she did, and she had thought too often of the letters not to be sure that she had last seen them there. Some one had forced the desk and taken them. The key had not turned easily, as it had always turned, because somebody had tampered with the lock. The little silk tag of the inner lid had been jammed inside by a hand unfamiliar with it. The details flashed upon her quickly, and in half a minute she understood that she had forgotten nothing. She had left the letters in the desk, and they were no longer there. Some one had stolen them all, and her husband’s letter with them.
She grew slowly cold with fear as she closed the empty desk and put it into the drawer again; and once more that hideous thought rose up and tormented her. Montalto had come back to be revenged upon her for his wrongs, slowly and surely; and that was not all, for he had come secretly to her room when she was out of the house and had stolen her letters, for a weapon against her if he needed one.
Who else in the house would have dared to take them?