“You are sure?” I queried incredulously.

“Do you think I could be mistaken in such a matter, sir?  I assure you that this cabinet at one time belonged to me.  You permit me?” she added, and took a step toward it.

“One moment, madame,” I interposed.  “I must warn you that in touching that cabinet you are running a great risk.”

“A great risk?” she echoed, looking at me.

“A very great risk, as I have pointed out to Mr. Hornblower.  I have reason to believe that two men met death while trying to open that secret drawer.”

“I believe Mr. Hornblower did tell me something of the sort,” she murmured; “but of course that is all a mistake.”

“Then the drawer is not guarded by poison?” I questioned.

“By poison?” she repeated blankly, and carried her handkerchief to her lips.  “I do not understand.”

I knew that my theory was collapsing, utterly, hopelessly.  I dared not look at Godfrey.

“Is there not, connected with the drawer,” I asked, “a mechanism which, as the drawer is opened, plunges two poisoned fangs into the hand which opens it?”

“No, Mr. Lester,” she answered, astonishment in her voice, “I assure you there is no such mechanism.”

I clutched at a last straw, and a sorry one it was!

“The mechanism may have been placed there since the cabinet passed from your possession,” I suggested.

“That is, perhaps, possible,” she agreed, though I saw that she was unconvinced.

“At any rate, madame,” I said, “I would ask that, in opening the drawer, you wear this gauntlet,” and I picked up Godfrey’s gauntlet from the chair on which it lay.  “It is needless that you should take any risk, however slight.  Permit me,” and I slipped the gauntlet over her right hand.

As I did so, I glanced at Godfrey.  He was staring at the veiled lady with such a look of stupefaction that I nearly choked with delight.  It had not often been my luck to see Jim Godfrey mystified, but he was certainly mystified now!

The veiled lady regarded the steel glove with a little laugh.

“I am now free to open the drawer?” she asked.

“Yes, madame.”

She moved toward the cabinet, Godfrey and I close behind her.  At last the secret which had defied us was to be revealed.  And with its revelation would come the end of the picturesque and romantic theory we had been building up so laboriously.

Instinctively, I glanced toward the shuttered window, but the semi-circle of light was unobscured.

The veiled lady bent above the table and disposed the fingers of her right hand to fit the metal inlay midway of the left side.

“It is a little awkward,” she said.  “I have always been accustomed to using the left hand.  You will notice that I am pressing on three points; but to open the drawer, one must press these points in a certain order—–­ first this one, then this one, and then this one.”