"Now," he said, "you are going to be the guardian of these keys. You are
going to wear this chain around your neck all the time, and the keys are
going in here."
He drew from his pocket a gold locket, and touching the spring showed
her that inside, instead of any place for a photograph, were little
embedded pads of velvet, shaped for the keys. He placed them in and hung
the locket around her neck. She looked at it, half terrified.
"I do not understand," she said, "why you trust me with this. Surely it
would be safer with you!"
He smiled grimly.
"You do not know my friends," he said. "Remember that in my possession
is not only the document which must cause them to abandon their great
scheme of attack upon me, but also that that same document, if made
proper use of, means ruin and ridicule for them. New York is a civilized
city, it is true, but money can buy the assassin's pistol to-day as
easily as it bought the bravo's knife a few hundred years ago. Have you
ever thought of the number of unexplained, if not undetected crimes you
read of continually, in which the victims are generally rich men?
Perhaps not, and you need not worry your little head about it, but take
my word for it, the keys are safer with you.
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