He fished in his pocket for the key, cautiously unlocked the
door, opened it by slow inches, and peered out.
The room was in blackness. The house was still. All was well. With the
feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to
crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the
disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to
him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and
his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the
cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom
before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession
before subsiding with another rattle: but to Sam it sounded like the end
of the world.
He sat in the darkness, massaging his bruised skull. His hours of
imprisonment in the cupboard had had a bad effect on his nervous
system, and he vacillated between tears of weakness and a militant
desire to get at the cuckoo-clock with a hatchet. He felt that it had
done it on purpose and was now chuckling to itself in fancied security.
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