for life. I know who she is. I know what she thinks she will do. And believe you me, she can do it if she gets that chest open, and that chest belongs to me. What are you going to do about it?”
“Where’s the key?” asked Jamie.
“My dad’s got it,” said the little Scout. “It’s among the things the Bee Master had at the hospital with him and the day things were settled the probate judge gave ’em to Dad to keep till I’m of age. It’s in his desk at home. I could get it by making a run in, but I ain’t going to do it. That reminds me that she ain’t going to unlock that chest with any key she’ll find around the house, nor any key she will get made, ’cause that chest’s got a private kind of a lock on it and there’s a leaf in the carving where you've got to press a spring before the lock will work. Days when I had done everything else and I was getting ready to go home and the Bee Master was so lonesome for something alive and something to talk to him he would let me work that combination and show me the things and let me look at the pictures and let me see the things that were in there that belonged to big Mary and little Mary. And that’s what’s been working in my head. There’s a picture in that chest of that Jane when she was little, and she looked just about as measly as she does now, It’s got a name and a date on it, too, that will kind of fix her if she don’t look out what she tells the probate judge. She can’t get in that chest unless she splits it with an ax, and if she ever does that—zowie!”
