The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English
attention of a truly thoughtful mind. Possibly, as you think so little of
it, you will be able to solve the puzzle."
I took what he held out to me. It was an oblong box, perhaps seven inches
long by three inches broad.
"Where's the puzzle?" I asked.
"If you will examine the lid of the box, you will see."
I turned it over and over; it was difficult to see which was the lid. Then
I perceived that on one side were printed these words:
"PUZZLE: TO OPEN THE BOX"
The words were so faintly printed that it was not surprising that I had
not noticed them at first. Pugh explained.
"I observed that box on a tray outside a second-hand furniture shop. It
struck my eye. I took it up. I examined it. I inquired of the proprietor
of the shop in what the puzzle lay. He replied that that was more than he
could tell me. He himself had made several attempts to open the box, and
all of them had failed. I purchased it. I took it home. I have tried, and
I have failed. I am aware, Tress, of how you pride yourself upon your
ingenuity. I cannot doubt that, if you try, you will not fail."
While Pugh was prosing, I was examining the box. It was at least well
made. It weighed certainly under two ounces. I struck it with my knuckles;
it sounded hollow. There was no hinge; nothing of any kind to show that it
ever had been opened, or, for the matter of that, that it ever could be
opened. The more I examined the thing, the more it whetted my curiosity.
That it could be opened, and in some ingenious manner, I made no
doubt--but how?
The box was not a new one. At a rough guess I should say that it had been
a box for a good half century; there were certain signs of age about it
which could not escape a practiced eye. Had it remained unopened all that
time? When opened, what would be found inside? It _sounded_ hollow;
probably nothing at all--who could tell?
It was formed of small pieces of inlaid wood. Several woods had been used;
some of them were strange to me. They were of different colors; it was
pretty obvious that they must all of them have been hard woods. The pieces
were of various shapes--hexagonal, octagonal, triangular, square, oblong,
and even circular. The process of inlaying them had been beautifully done.
So nicely had the parts been joined that the lines of meeting were
difficult to discover with the naked eye; they had been joined solid, so
to speak. It was an excellent example of marquetry. I had been over-hasty
in my deprecation; I owed as much to Pugh.
"This box of yours is better worth looking at than I first supposed. Is it
to be sold?"
"No, it is not to be sold. Nor"--he "fixed" me with his spectacles--"is it
to be given away. I have brought it to you for the simple purpose of
ascertaining if you have ingenuity enough to open it."
"I will engage to open it in two seconds--with a hammer."
"I dare say. _I_ will open it with a hammer. The thing is to open it
without."
"Let me see." I began, with the aid of a microscope, to examine the box
more closely. "I will give you one piece of information, Pugh. Unless I am
mistaken, the secret lies in one of these little pieces of inlaid wood.
You push it, or you press it, or something, and the whole affair flies
open."
"Such was my own first conviction. I am not so sure of it now. I have
pressed every separate piece of wood; I have tried to move each piece in
every direction. No result has followed. My theory was a hidden spring."
"But there must be a hidden spring of some sort, unless you are to open it
by a mere exercise of force. I suppose the box is empty."
"I thought it was at first, but now I am not so sure of that either. It
all depends on the position in which you hold it. Hold it in this
position--like this--close to your ear. Have you a small hammer?" I took a
small hammer. "Tap it softly, with the hammer. Don't you notice a sort of
reverberation within?"
Pugh was right, there certainly was something within; something which
seemed to echo back my tapping, almost as if it were a living thing. I
mentioned this to Pugh.
"But you don't think that there is something alive inside the box? There
can't be. The box must be air-tight, probably as much air-tight as an
exhausted receiver."
"How do we know that? How can we tell that no minute interstices have been
left for the express purpose of ventilation?" I continued tapping with the
hammer. I noticed one peculiarity, that it was only when I held the box in
a particular position, and tapped at a certain spot, there came the
answering taps from within. "I tell you what it is, Pugh, what I hear is
the reverberation of some machinery."
"Do you think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Give the box to me." Pugh put the box to his ear. He tapped. "It sounds
to me like the echoing tick, tick of some great beetle; like the sort of
noise which a deathwatch makes, you know."
Trust Pugh to find a remarkable explanation for a simple fact; if the
explanation leans toward the supernatural, so much the more satisfactory
to Pugh. I knew better.
"The sound which you hear is merely the throbbing or the trembling of the
mechanism with which it is intended that the box should be opened. The
mechanism is placed just where you are tapping it with the hammer. Every
tap causes it to jar."
"It sounds to me like the ticking of a deathwatch. However, on such
subjects, Tress, I know what you are."
"My dear Pugh, give it an extra hard tap, and you will see."
He gave it an extra hard tap. The moment he had done so, he started.
"I've done it now."
"What have you done?"
"Broken something, I fancy." He listened intently, with his ear to the
box. "No--it seems all right. And yet I could have sworn I had damaged
something; I heard it smash."
"Give me the box." He gave it me. In my turn, I listened. I shook the box.
Pugh must have been mistaken. Nothing rattled; there was not a sound; the
box was as empty as before. I gave a smart tap with the hammer, as Pugh
had done. Then there certainly was a curious sound. To my ear, it sounded
like the smashing of glass. "I wonder if there is anything fragile inside
your precious puzzle, Pugh, and, if so, if we are shivering it by
degrees?"
II
"What _is_ that noise?"
I lay in bed in that curious condition which is between sleep and waking.
When, at last, I _knew_ that I was awake, I asked myself what it 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 the other. Rust!--there was the
mystery. The same rust which had prevented the mechanism from acting at
once was causing the screeching now. The uncanny sounds were caused by
nothing more nor less than the want of a drop or two of oil. Such an
explanation would not have satisfied Pugh, it satisfied me.
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?