All that night I lay awake
thinking, thinking. Next day, at a time when I knew Raoul would be
working in his office, I went to see him there, and cheered him up as
well as I could. I told him that in a few days I hoped to have eighteen
or twenty thousand pounds in my hands--all for him. To let him have the
money would make me happier than I'd ever been. At first he said he
wouldn't take it from me--I knew he would say that! But, at last, after
I'd cried and begged, and persuaded, he consented; only it was to be a
loan, and some how, some time, he would pay me back. In that office
there are several great safes; and when we had grown quite happy and gay
together, I made Raoul tell me which was the most important of
all--where the really sacred and valuable things were kept. He laughed
and pointed out the most interesting one--the one, he said, which held
all the deepest secrets of French foreign diplomacy. I was sure then
that the thing I had to get for the British Foreign Secretary must be
there, though it was such a new thing that it couldn't have been
anywhere for long. 'There are three keys to that safe,' said Raoul. 'One
is kept by the President; one is always with the Foreign Secretary; this
is the third'; and he showed me a strange little key different to any I
had seen before.
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