Picking up the box, I placed it to my ear.

“I wonder how long this little performance is going to continue.  And what is going to happen when it is good enough to cease?  I hope”—­an uncomfortable thought occurred to me—­“I hope Pugh hasn’t picked up some pleasant little novelty in the way of an infernal machine.  It would be a first-rate joke if he and I had been endeavoring to solve the puzzle of how to set it going.”

I don’t mind owning that as this reflection crossed my mind I replaced Pugh’s puzzle on the dressing-table.  The idea did not commend itself to me at all.  The box evidently contained some curious mechanism.  It might be more curious than comfortable.  Possibly some agreeable little device in clockwork.  The tick, tick, tick suggested clockwork which had been planned to go a certain time, and then—­then, for all I knew, ignite an explosive, and—­blow up.  It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it were to explode while I stood there, in my nightshirt, looking on.  It is true that the box weighed very little.  Probably, as I have said, the whole affair would not have turned the scale at a couple of ounces.  But then its very lightness might have been part of the ingenious inventor’s little game.  There are explosives with which one can work a very satisfactory amount of damage with considerably less than a couple of ounces.

While I was hesitating—­I own it!—­whether I had not better immerse Pugh’s puzzle in a can of water, or throw it out of the window, or call down Bob with a request to at once remove it to his apartment, both the tick, tick, tick, and the screeching ceased, and all within the box was still.  If it was going to explode, it was now or never.  Instinctively I moved in the direction of the door.

I waited with a certain sense of anxiety.  I waited in vain.  Nothing happened, not even a renewal of the sound.

“I wish Pugh had kept his precious puzzle at home.  This sort of thing tries one’s nerves.”

When I thought that I perceived that nothing seemed likely to happen, I returned to the neighborhood of the table.  I looked at the box askance.  I took it up gingerly.  Something might go off at any moment for all I knew.  It would be too much of a joke if Pugh’s precious puzzle exploded in my hand.  I shook it doubtfully; nothing rattled.  I held it to my ear.  There was not a sound.  What had taken place?  Had the clockwork run down, and was the machine arranged with such a diabolical ingenuity that a certain, interval was required, after the clockwork had run down, before an explosion could occur?  Or had rust caused the mechanism to again hang fire?

“After making all that commotion the thing might at least come open.”  I banged the box viciously against the corner of the table.  I felt that I would almost rather that an explosion should take place than that nothing should occur.  One does not care to be disturbed from one’s sound slumber in the small hours of the morning for a trifle.