The opening had been concealed by a dirt-covered lid, now thrown aside.

Except for a chair with three legs and a chest with the lid thrown open, the long room was as empty as the chest.

A tin trunk from the Army & Navy-Stores tropical department stood there, the lid thrown back to reveal files and cards held together with elastic bands.

"I wonder what the killer was looking for," Stoddard said, glancing into a cedar chest at the foot of the bed, which was standing with its lid thrown back and a comforter pulled out over the sides.

On this pillar rested a metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form; its hinged lid thrown back, and its interior holding what looked beneath the decade-deep dust to be an egg-shaped or irregularly spherical object some four inches through.

There was a strongbox pulled to the middle of the floor, its lid thrown open on emptiness.

I crept past the charred remains of a monster, and my torch picked out the half-thawed wall and the box projecting, its lid thrown back.

At the foot of the four-poster, with its lid thrown back, stood Sir Ralph's huge personal coffer.

Impossibly, her iron lockbox sat on the bed with its lid thrown open.