George went into the Bank parlour, then to other of the business rooms. He was looking about for letters: he was looking at books: altogether he seemed to be busy. Presently he came out and called Pierce.
“I want a light.”
Pierce brought it. “I shall be engaged here for half an hour,” said his master. “Should any one call, I cannot be disturbed: under any pretence, you understand.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Pierce, as he withdrew. And George locked the intervening door between the house and the Bank, and took out the key.
He turned into a passage and went diving down a few stairs, the light in his hand; selected one of several keys which he had brought with him, and opened the door of a dry-vaulted room. It was the strong-room of the Bank, secure and fireproof.
“Safe number three, on right,” he read, consulting a bit of paper on which he had copied down the words in pencil upstairs. “Number three? Then it must be this one.”
Taking another of the keys, he put it into the lock. Turned it, and turned it, and—could not open the lock. George snatched it out, and read the label. “Key of safe number two.”
“What an idiot I am! I have brought the wrong key!”
He went up again, grumbling at his stupidity, opened the cupboard where the keys were kept, and looked for the right one. Number three was the one he wanted. And number three was not there.
George stood transfixed. He had custody of the keys. No other person had the power of approaching the place they were guarded in: except his brother. Had the Bank itself disappeared, George Godolphin could not have been much more astonished than at the disappearance of this key. Until this moment, this discovery of its absence, he would have been ready to swear that there it was, before all the judges in the land.