So Dexter Drake ended his story of the Key in Michael, sitting there on the couch in our living room in New York, many years afterwards.
“Of course, Howard,” he added, after a moment of musing, “the jewels were in no danger, so long as nobody knew that she had escaped with them. The safe had probably been in that closet for years; she had only to have the combination changed. Who would look for a secret writing between the canvas and stretcher of a portrait over the mantelpiece? And even on the unimaginable chance that the paper was found and deciphered, who would fancy that a few lines of vers libre about sun, stars, and comets, had anything do to with the Vorontsov jewels?”
“Who,” I replied, “except you, would have fancied it!”
“Ah!” The great detective gave me his quick bright-eyed smile. “But you are forgetting the strange message to me from the dying woman. And even I, you remember, did not find it so easy to read that ingenious, that unique cipher, worked out on the numbers of the roulette wheel!”