Keyhole

“ The escutcheon has been a favourite resource with lock-makers. Mr. Mordan’s escutcheon, for instance, introduced before the Society of Arts in 1830, is a contrivance to be placed temporarily over the keyhole of a door, to prevent the picking of the lock during the owner’s absence. The escutcheon, or “protector,” has a short pipe which, after the door has been locked, is thrust into the keyhole; attached to the pipe is a small lock, on Bramah’s or any other convenient principle, so contrived that, on turning its key, two lancet-shaped pieces fly out laterally and bury themselves in the wood. ”

“ But Captain Francis Newcombe had not expected that there would be.
"Look for a little hole, Runnells," he said. "Anything, for instance, that might appear to be no more than a fault in the concrete. And look particularly above high water mark. The opening is below because the old man could only get in at low tide; but the keyhole is more likely to be above out of the reach of the water because it must be watertight inside." ”

“ Six of the keys—the pearly ones—opened six beautiful rooms, but the seventh had rubies in its handle, and it was a little, little key, not at all like a door-key; so Pandora looked about for a little keyhole that the key would fit, and at last she found a cabinet of ebony inlaid with gold and red tortoiseshell, and the little seventh key just fitted through the opening of the gold lock-plate and into the keyhole. ”

“ When he had gone some distance he found a box. "There must be something funny in that box," he said to himself; but although he twisted and turned it he was not able to get it open. When he had walked some distance farther he found a little key. He was tired, and sat down by the roadside. He thought it would be great fun to see if the key fitted the box, for there was a little keyhole in it. He took the little key out of his pocket; he blew first into the pipe of the key, and then he blew into the keyhole ; he put the key into the keyhole and turned it round. ”

“ Holes two inches or more in diameter do not require a bit that size, for smaller holes can be bored and these trimmed to the required opening with a chisel or with the keyhole-saw. Whatever style of bit-stock you buy, get one with a fair length of arm, as a good leverage cannot be obtained with a short one. ”

“ Hang the head up as high as possible out of the way, and also because the room is always warmest near the ceiling; two centre-bit holes of different sizes, forming a kind of keyhole, may be drilled in the centre of the neck-block, or strong wire bolted in the form of a loop near the top to hang it up by. ”

“ The latch, too, was a patent one, with a well-known maker’s name on the keyhole cover—nearly new. To force a front door in a public street in the broad light of day without attracting attention is well-nigh impossible; therefore, instructing her to wait patiently where she was, so as not to arouse suspicion of the neighbours, I waited my opportunity, and then got over the locked gate and went down the steps to the kitchen door in the basement. That, too, was securely fastened; but on examination of the window it struck me that the shutters were only closed to and not bolted. ”

“ To make a really complicated box of wards, and to cut keys which shall accurately fit their sweep, is a matter requiring considerable manual dexterity; and some warded locks are therefore expensive. But even with the best of them, all that it is necessary to do for opening the lock is to take a blank key which will properly fit the keyhole, coat it with wax, and then inserting it in the lock, press it round against the wards, which will cause them to leave an accurate impression of their section on the key. ”

“ He also exhibited the key-cutting machine employed for cutting the bits; and also a set of burglar’s tools employed for drilling into the door of an iron safe sufficiently for breaking open or removing the lock, showing that the hold required for giving the cutting pressure upon the powerful drill employed for the purpose was obtained by a steel cross piece inserted into the keyhole and turned at right angles, so as to hold across inside the lock ”

“ He says that when you come home late at night, and not precisely in the condition to be accurate about things, there isn’t any nonsense about finding a key first, and then going through the more delicate operations of finding a keyhole and getting the key in right side up. ”

“ Its most noticeable feature is that it permits the use of a very small key, though the number of combinations possible is still enormous (several millions) . In our illustrations (Figs. 219, 220, 221) we show the mechanism controlling the turning of [Pg 437] the key. The keyhole is a narrow twisted slot in the face of a cylinder, G (Fig. 219) , which revolves inside a larger fixed cylinder, F. As the key is pushed in, the notches in its upper edge raise up the pins A1, B1, C1, D1, E1, until their tops exactly reach the surface of G, which can now be revolved by the key in Fig. ”

“ This is the key of 84, Camford Street. The lock is high up on the left-hand side of the door. There is no keyhole. You will see a green spot. Press the key against the spot and it will enter the lock. Push home as far as it will go, then jerk upwards, and the door will open. Don’t try to enter when anyone is looking. Directly you get it, tear off this label and burn it. Then pass the chain about your waist, underneath your dress, and snap the padlock. If you lose the key, or let it go for a moment from your possession, may the gods burn up the marrow in your bones. And they will. ”

“ Through The Keyhole. THE ROOM, or office, as has been written, was impregnable to any but an assault in force, the doors invincible save by the shattering crash of high explosive, the windows almost equally so.
Quarrier’s man, Harrison, even, would be unable to enter the room in his employer’s absence; so that, knowing the combination of the safe, he could take nothing from it, or bring anything into it. He left, in the rare intervals that Quarrier suffered his ministrations, always with his master, returning likewise, if he returned at all, in Quarrier’s company. ”

“ Frobisher therefore set to work to examine the lock, to discover whether there existed any possibility of picking it. It was an old-fashioned piece of mechanism, and, luckily, the iron case was on the inside of the door, the great keyhole being placed near the centre. Now for a piece of stout wire, the stouter the better! The young Englishman proceeded at once to hunt about among the various machines and instruments in the dim corners of the chamber in search of what he required. ”

“ The experimenter passes through the keyhole an instrument so arranged as to give a tendency in the bolt to withdraw in the wished-for direction; and a pressure produced in the slides by this tendency gives information concerning the state of the slides; and then comes the tentative process on the slides themselves. Mr. Ainger was quite right in describing the false notches as an admirable addition to the safety of the Bramah lock; but he was not correct in stating that these notches rendered any further attempts on the lock hopeless. The false notches are not so deep as the true ”

“ I turned back to the stair, And faced nine keyholes pale and stern That lay in ambush there. Six keyholes on the ceiling sat, Eight keyholes on the door, And seven saddened keyholes lay Hiccoughing on the floor. I crawled through one, I crawled through two, I crawled through keyholes three— And then I saw a vistaed mile Of keyholes waiting me!— “I will not crawl another yard Through keyholes, though I die!”— Oh, when my fighting blood is up A Turk am. They leapt at me, they flew at me, They whistled as they came, They gritted of their gleaming teeth, They stung and spurted flame ”

“ As a matter of fact, it is even now in perfectly good order, except for the damage we have jointly committed with the screw-driver. And now, observe! That lock was shut by another key; if the man that did that is as sharp as I suppose he is, he will have got rid of that key at once. But perhaps he hasn't; and if not, then the man who has that key is the thief. At any rate, the key is the clue we must hunt for. Let us have your clerks in one by one, and look at their keys. Some are out at lunch by this time, probably? ”

“ Most of the house-robberies so common in all large towns are effected through the common street-door latches in ordinary use being opened by false keys. It is a notorious fact that thousands are made year after year, but which do not afford the least security, as they are all so made that any one key will open the whole, and it is [15] not until the owner has his hall cleared, or his plate carried off, that he finds out that his apparently complex key is a mere sham, there not being in the lock a single tumbler or ward to correspond with the cuts in the web of the key. ”

“ Few persons would incur the trouble of using two keys; and besides this, there were not wanting certain defects in the action and reaction of the several parts; for if the clamp-screw were to be left unreleased, the first series of tumblers would be upheld by the second series in such a way that the exact impression of the lengths of the several bits of the key could be obtained through the key-hole while the lock was unlocked or the bolt unshot. ”

“ In fig. 9 we shall be able to illustrate this. Numbers 1, 2, and 3, all appear very different keys, and it is quite true that neither one would open a lock adapted for either of the other two; and yet the very simple arrangement No. 4 would open all three. This No. 4 is called a skeleton-key; and the relation which it bears to the others may be expressed in the form of a proposition thus: at any point where there is solid metal in all the keys, there must (or may) be solid metal in the corresponding part of the skeleton-key ”

“ In some instances, for additional security and for special work, the corrugations in the keyway are changed in shape so that the manufacturers’ regular type of key will not enter the keyway, or plug, thus allowing no chance for the regular type of key to operate the lock. ”

“ You say you yourself keep the only key of the padlock, as well as the key of the safe. So that you open the safe every morning yourself and close it at night?"
"Just so."
"And do you never entrust the keys to anybody else?"
"The key of the safe is on a separate bunch from the key of the box. This second bunch, with the key of the box, is always in my pocket, and not a soul else ever touches it. The other bunch, with the outer key of the safe, I sometimes hand to my partner, or to the head clerk, Mr. Foster, if something is wanted from the safe when I am busy. ”

“ But this group of names must sometimes be referred to the Domesday wars, an outlying potion of a manor. Lock is more often a land name, to be classed with Hatch (Chapter XIII) , but was also used of a water-gate. Key was once the usual spelling of quay. The curious name Keylock is a perversion of Kellogg, Mid. Eng. Kill-hog. Port seldom belongs here, as the Mid. English is almost always de la Porte, i.e. Gates. From well we have a very large number of compounds, e.g. Cauldwell (cold) , Halliwell, the variants of which, Holliwell, Hollowell, probably all represent Mid. ”

“ The message was to take an ingenious form. Hunt was to have a fellow waiting about in the street, and as soon as Henning could get out—say to lunch—he was just to send the key by this messenger—the key with which he had locked the new padlock on the black box. You see the advantages of that simple arrangement. First, the key, which is evidence, is got rid of in a safe and effectual way—a thing that couldn't be done as well by merely flinging it away on or near the premises, where it might be found. ”

“ In driving a key out, especially if it is fast home, a quick heavy blow is best, as it is less likely to burr, swell, or bulge the end of the key. But after the key has started lighter blows will answer.
To make a key for an old sunk keyway, it is as well to fit a piece of wood thereto as a guide in forging and fitting the key. If a fast running grindstone or emery wheel is at hand, many will forge the key a trifle large and then grind it as near as possible, and finish by filing. ”

“ As the keys in through keyways often require to be driven in very tight, and as the parts keyed together often remain a long time without being taken apart and in some situations become rusted together, it is often a difficult matter to get them apart. First, it is difficult to drive it out because the blows swell the end of the key so that it cannot pass through the keyway, and secondly, driving the socket off the plug of the two parts keyed together often damages the socket and may bend the rod to which it is keyed. ”

“ Key to Chubb’s lock.
The key is represented in fig. 32. It has six steps, besides a terminal step to act upon the bolt. The height of each step, or the distance to which it extends from the pipe of the key, depends of course on the height to which its corresponding tumbler is to be lifted; and it matters not whether the steps of the key are adjusted to the slots of the tumblers, or the slots to the steps, provided the agreement be brought about. It is simply a matter of manufacturing convenience that the key-steps are cut first and the tumbler-slots afterwards. ”

“ Various sections of keys are shown in fig. 20. At (a) is the hollow or saddle key. With this form of key it is not necessary to cut the shaft in any way, but its holding power is small, and it is therefore only used for light work. At (b) is the key on a flat, sometimes called a flat key. The holding power of this key is much greater than that of the saddle key. At (c) is the sunk key, a very secure and very common form.
The part of the shaft upon which a key rests is called the key bed or key way, and the recess in the boss of the wheel or pulley into which the key fits is called the key way ”