was that
had woke me. Suddenly I became conscious that something was making itself
audible in the silence of the night. For some seconds I lay and listened.
Then I sat up in bed.

"What _is_ that noise?"

It was like the tick, tick of some large and unusually clear-toned clock.
It might have been a clock, had it not been that the sound was varied,
every half dozen ticks or so, by a sort of stifled screech, such as might
have been uttered by some small creature in an extremity of anguish. I got
out of bed; it was ridiculous to think of sleep during the continuation of
that uncanny shrieking. I struck a light. The sound seemed to come from
the neighborhood of my dressing-table. I went to the dressing-table, the
lighted match in my hand, and, as I did so, my eyes fell on Pugh's
mysterious box. That same instant there issued, from the bowels of the
box, a more uncomfortable screech than any I had previously heard. It took
me so completely by surprise that I let the match fall from my hand to the
floor. The room was in darkness. I stood, I will not say trembling,
listening--considering their volume--to the _eeriest_ shrieks I ever
heard. All at once they ceased. Then came the tick, tick, tick again. I
struck another match and lit the gas.

Pugh had left his puzzle box behind him. We had done all we could,
together, to solve the puzzle. He had left it behind to see what I could
do with it alone. So much had it engrossed my attention that I had even
brought it into my bedroom, in order that I might, before retiring to
rest, make a final attempt at the solution of the mystery. _Now_ what
possessed the thing?

As I stood, and looked, and listened, one thing began to be clear to me,
that some sort of machinery had been set in motion inside the box. How it
had been set in motion was another matter. But the box had been subjected
to so much handling, to such pressing and such hammering, that it was not
strange if, after all, Pugh or I had unconsciously hit upon the spring
which set the whole thing going. Possibly the mechanism had got so rusty
that it had refused to act at once. It had hung fire, and only after some
hours had something or other set the imprisoned motive power free.

But what about the screeching? Could there be some living creature
concealed within the box? Was I listening to the cries of some small
animal in agony? Momentary reflection suggested that the explanation of
the one thing was the explanation of th