If he had not observed the lock, it is possible, although unlikely, that Duff Bogan’s life might have been relatively speaking, as colorless as his estimate of Harry Ellings’. But Duff did notice the lock and wonder about it, and nothing was ever the same for him afterward.
Wondering about locks was not, in Duffs case, an idle exercise in bafflement. Early in life he had been discarded by his schoolmates as a possible pitcher, fielder, end or basketball center. Competitive sports revealed him as something of an Ichabod Crane and, since his middle name was Diffenduffer, after his mother’s father, he had been called Duffer from the age of ten. He was Duff only to the kindly Yateses. But though a duffer at games and sports, he excelled in hobbies. Among them was a know-how concerning locks.
At eleven, Duff had sent ten cents for a booklet called The Boy Locksmith. Finding that people were either charmed by or aghast at his proficiency with skeleton keys, he had advanced to more elaborate literature on the subject. Before he reached high-school age he was much in demand where keys were lost or where trunks, barns, cabinets and the like refused to open. In high school, while other boys mowed lawns for extra change, Duff had repaired luggage and started cars that lacked keys.
To look at Harry Ellings’ lock-fitted closet door, then, was to know how to get the door open rather quickly. Since it was unthinkable that the drab, good-natured star boarder had anything important or secret locked away, Duff felt no curiosity. But it would be fun, he thought, to open the door, set something alien in the closet — and wait for results.
Grinning, Duff ran down the back stairs, came back with selected tools, and took steps three at a time while Mrs. Yates gripped the binding of her magazine tightly — sometimes, when he rushed that way, Duff fell.
His hands, however, were not clumsy. They worked rapidly over the lock and soon the door swung open. Inside, Harry’s suits hung neatly. On the shelf were suitcases, old and dusty. On the floor was a cubical hatbox of cardboard. Duff procured a metal wastebasket and set it on top of the hatbox.
He thought his joke would be more noticeable if he put the hatbox on the basket.
Only he couldn’t lift the hatbox. He took another hold and tried again. The cardboard threatened to tear, but the box didn’t budge. So Duff untied the tape and raised the lid. Inside, was a hardwood box, well made, waxed, with an inset handle and a lock of a kind Duff had never before seen. He stared at this and then tipped over the box and its hatbox disguise—
which could be done only with effort. The whole thing weighed about a hundred pounds.
He went downstairs then and interrupted Mrs. Yates’ reading. “The doggonedest thing,” he said — and told her. “What could he have — what could anybody have? — in a fifteen-inch box, weighing that much? Gold?”