It would not turn. Something was the matter with the lock. Had it been tampered with? Sara's face grew hot.
Turning and twisting and pulling, but all gently, she worked the key about in the lock. No, it would not open it. In the previous summer's holidays a certain cupboard in Watton's room downstairs declined to be opened in just the same way, and when inquiries came to be made, Master Dick Davenal boldly avowed that, wanting some jam one day, he had opened it with another cupboard key, and so had spoiled the lock. Had this lock been put out of order in the same way? The proper key to it was always about herself.
A locksmith had to be brought in to the desk. He speedily opened it and put the lock to rights. "It was only a ward bent," he said. Sara inquired whether he thought it had been done through a strange key being put into the lock, but she did not get much satisfaction. "Like enough it might," he said, but "sometimes them wards got out of order with their own key."
"It seems quite a common lock," remarked Sara, as she paid him.
"Laws, yes! A'most any key might open that."
"What was the matter with the desk?" questioned Miss Bettina, who met the man in the passage as he was going away.
"I don't know, aunt. It would not open: such a thing has never happened to it before. Do you remember last midsummer holidays Dick spoiled Watton's cupboard through undoing it with a false key? The man says it may have been the same case here." And Neal, who was standing immediately opposite his young mistress, and met her eye as she spoke heard the words with unruffled composure; not so much as a shade of change disturbing the equanimity of his impassive countenance.
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
AN UNPLEASANT VISIT.
"Set me down at Essex Street."