THE PUZZLE.

I.

PUGH came into my room holding something wrapped in a piece of brown paper.

'Tress, I have brought you something on which you may exercise your ingenuity.' He began, with exasperating deliberation, to untie the string which bound his parcel; he is one of those persons who would not cut a knot to save their lives. The process occupied him the better part of a quarter of an hour. held out the contents of the paper.

Then he

'What do you think of that?' he asked. I thought nothing of it, and I told him so. 'I was prepared for that confession. I have noticed, Tress, that you generally do think nothing of an article which really deserves the 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 practised eye. Had it remained unopened all that time? When opened, what would be found inside? It sounded hollow; probably nothing at allwho could tell?

Several woods.
They were of

It was formed of small pieces of inlaid wood. had been used; some of them were strange to me. different colours; 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 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 depreciation; I owned 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, that there came the answering taps from within. I tell you what it is, Pugh, what I hear is the reverberation of some machinery.'

'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 death watch makes, you know.'

Trust Pugh to find a remarkable explanation for a simple fact; if the explanation leans towards 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 death watch. 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.

he started.

'I've done it now.'

The moment he had done so,

'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?'

'What is that noise?'

II.

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, 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 neighbourhood 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 Tress; it satished 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 endeavouring 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.

VOL. XIX. NO. 113, N.S.

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