ASTORIA, Ore. - A big, black enigma sits silently in Astoria, a mystery with a solution lost to time.

It's a safe, the kind we see in old movies, where professional criminals carefully tease out the combination with a stethoscope to retrieve the diamonds and cash inside before making a silent getaway.

Except this safe, labeled "Hall Safe and Lock," is not giving up its combination easily at all.

The safe is 130 years old, weighs 2,000 pounds and holds untold secrets - or maybe nothing at all. It's not the kind of safe you can jostle around to see if there's anything inside.

The Victorian-era tumblers so far have refused to yield their secret numbers despite the efforts of professionals from far and wide who have tried to crack the combination without success. The heavy metal door remains tightly sealed.

Of course, modern technology could be used circumvent the lock. Holes could be drilled to open the door or even just to peer inside.

But the owner, Floyd Holcomb, who found the safe during a renovation effort for the Pier 39 shopping area, will have none of it.

"We've had several people come and attempt to get in to it, nobody's got in to it," Holcomb said. "It's an artifact. Would you go out and drill an artifact? No. I think the challenge is the fact that everybody's lazy today."

Holcomb, while not a professional safe-cracker, has spent some time twiddling the large, well-worn dial on the front of the safe.

"Hall was a real smart guy, he's done all these fake spots, you can feel it," Holcomb said of the safe's builder as he turns the dial slowly and internal mechanics tick and click.

Holcomb has tried to find local old-timers who may have seen what was in the safe in the distant past, when it was the property of one of the many canneries along Astoria's busy marine industrial district.

"Everybody scratches their heads. They remember the safe, they don't remember it ever being opened," he said of conversations with past workers who knew about the safe.

Combinations based on educated guesses and speculation have so far not led to a full turn of the safe's handle.

Holcomb is thinking about holding a safe-cracking competition to see if anyone can get the heavy black door of the safe to finally open.

Until then, the secrets held inside are, as they say, safe.