The three men barely survive fending off the rats when they break into the tower. A life-and-death struggle ensues as the men seek to save themselves from the hungry horde, who swarm over the lighthouse. The three lighthouse attendants are headkeeper, Itchoua (the eldest of the men), Le Gleo, and the narrator (whose name is never given).Īn abandoned ship, infested with ferocious rats, makes landfall. The rock the lighthouse stands on is dubbed 'Three Skeleton Key', named after a tragedy when three convicts escaping from Cayenne became ship-wrecked on the rock and eventually died of hunger and thirst – the only thing left of them were a heap of bones cleaned off by scavenging birds. The plot involves three men tending a lighthouse on an island off the coast of French Guiana. Although he penned numerous adventure novels and short stories, he is today remembered for a single work: "Three Skeleton Key". The younger Toudouze wrote on such topics as art, architecture, travel and French naval history. His father, Gustave Toudouze, was a well-known author of the time. Toudouze (1877–1972) was born in Paris, France. This suspenseful tale and " Leiningen Versus the Ants" were discovered by the magazine's editor Arnold Gingrich. The January 1937 edition of Esquire marked its first appearance in English. "Three Skeleton Key" is a short story by the French author Georges-Gustave Toudouze. Lock bumping, a technique for opening pin tumbler locks.French short story by Georges-Gustave Toudouze "Three Skeleton Key".In hotels without electronic locks, skeleton keys are used by housekeeping services to enter the rooms. Legitimate skeleton or master keys are used in many modern contexts where lock operation is required and the original key has been lost or is not available. Skeleton keys have often been associated with attempts to defeat locks for illicit purposes, to release handcuffs for example, and standard keys have been filed down for that purpose. A keyed-alike system is different from a master key system as none of the locks have a key that can open only that lock. Some applications, such as a building with multiple entrance doors, have numerous locks that are keyed alike one key will open every door. A skeleton key has the warded section of the key removed so that it opens all the doors of a system. Each door will have different wards and can only be opened by the correctly warded key or the master key. A master key system of lever locks has the same lever heights in all locks. Lever lock skeleton keys are used in a lock with usually three or five levers and a set of wards that come into contact with the bit of the key only on the sides-the top is for pushing the levers to their correct heights while the warded section of the key just has to pass uninterrupted to allow the key to rotate fully. To counteract the illicit creation of such keys, locksmiths can put wards not just in the center but on the outside as well, making the creation of a skeleton key more difficult. This can usually be done by removing most of the center of the key, allowing it to pass by the wards without interference, operating the lock. A common set of skeleton keys used to open most types of warded padlocks.Ī skeleton key is a key that has been filed or cut to create one that can be used to unlock a variety of warded locks each with a different configuration of wards.
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