“I’ve half a mind to get a hammer, and try, as they say in the cookery books, another way.”

Unfortunately I had promised Pugh to abstain from using force.  I might have shivered the box open with my hammer, and then explained that it had fallen, or got trod upon, or sat upon, or something, and so got shattered, only I was afraid that Pugh would not believe me.  The man is himself such an untruthful man that he is in a chronic state of suspicion about the truthfulness of others.

“Well, if you’re not going to blow up, or open, or something, I’ll say good night.”

I gave the box a final rap with my knuckles and a final shake, replaced it on the table, put out the gas, and returned to bed.

I was just sinking again into slumber, when that box began again.  It was true that Pugh had purchased the puzzle, but it was evident that the whole enjoyment of the purchase was destined to be mine.  It was useless to think of sleep while that performance was going on.  I sat up in bed once more.

“It strikes me that the puzzle consists in finding out how it is possible to go to sleep with Pugh’s purchase in your bedroom.  This is far better than the old-fashioned prescription of cats on the tiles.”

It struck me the noise was distinctly louder than before; this applied both to the tick, tick, tick, and the screeching.

“Possibly,” I told myself, as I relighted the gas, “the explosion is to come off this time.”

I turned to look at the box.  There could be no doubt about it; the noise was louder.  And, if I could trust my eyes, the box was moving—­giving a series of little jumps.  This might have been an optical delusion, but it seemed to me that at each tick the box gave a little bound.  During the screeches—­which sounded more like the cries of an animal in an agony of pain even than before—­if it did not tilt itself first on one end, and then on another, I shall never be willing to trust the evidence of my own eyes again.  And surely the box had increased in size; I could have sworn not only that it had increased, but that it was increasing, even as I stood there looking on.  It had grown, and still was growing, both broader, and longer, and deeper.  Pugh, of course, would have attributed it to supernatural agency; there never was a man with such a nose for a ghost.  I could picture him occupying my position, shivering in his nightshirt, as he beheld that miracle taking place before his eyes.  The solution which at once suggested itself to me—­and which would never have suggested itself to Pugh!—­was that the box was fashioned, as it were, in layers, and that the ingenious mechanism it contained was forcing the sides at once both upward and outward.  I took it in my hand.  I could feel something striking against the bottom of the box, like the tap, tap, tapping of a tiny hammer.

“This is a pretty puzzle of Pugh’s.  He would say that that is the tapping of a deathwatch.  For my part I have not much faith in deathwatches, et hoc genus omne, but it certainly is a curious tapping; I wonder what is going to happen next?”