exterior depth, and turned to me with one of his dangerously sweet smiles.
"The devil!" he exclaimed. "Craye!—there's a false bottom to this box! I've been suspecting that for the last half-hour, and by all that is, it's true!"
I was beginning to get excited, and I stared at the box as hard as he had done.
"You make that out by measurement?" I asked.
"Precisely! There's a difference of a quarter of an inch between the interior and exterior depths," he replied. "That means there's the very slightest of cavities, but ample to conceal—what?"
"Nothing much, I should think," said I.
"No; but I've heard of very important and fateful things going into small compass," he remarked. "Anyway, there it is! You can't get away from the measurements. There's a space—there! And there'll be some trick of opening the thing from the bottom—probably connected with these feet."
He pointed to the four circular knobs on which the copper box rested, but made no attempt to touch them; his thoughts seemed
