He got up, and lighted one of the candles on the side-board. Then he very carefully opened the other door of the dining-room, and we all followed him out into a hall. There we listened again, but could hear nothing. He led the way up the back-stairs, and we tip- toed behind him. The candle which he carried flickered, and cast a dim light into two rooms which opened off the landing. One was a nursery, with children's blocks, stuffed elephants, and Noah's Ark animals on the floor, and on a couch. The moon, which had come out of the fog, shone in at a window, and its light fell right on a white rabbit sitting under a doll's parasol. He had tea-cups and saucers on the floor in front of him, but he was perfectly quiet. The noise did not come from him. The room on the other side of the landing was an ordinary bed-room, quite empty.
We stole along the landing toward the front of the house. Here were two more large bed-rooms. The beds were smooth and undisturbed, and both rooms were quiet as the grave.
"Nothing here," whispered Mr. Daddles, "we'll go down the front stairs."
He spoke in the lowest kind of a whisper,—I could hardly make out what he said. But he beckoned toward the stairs, and we all tip-toed in that direction. I can see how that hall looked,—I can see it now, just as I saw it, as we came down stairs. The wood- work was all painted white, some little moonlight came in through the glass over the front door, and that, with the candle, made it fairly clear. The stairs were broad, and they sloped gradually. There were two big portraits on the wall, one of them over the stairs. Rooms opened to right and left of the front door, and in the corner of the hall, to the right, stood a big clock. It ticked slowly and solemnly, and a little ship, above the dial, rocked back and forth on some painted waves. I caught Mr. Daddles by the sleeve.
"The clock is going," I whispered.
He nodded. "Eight day clock," he whispered back.
Then we continued down stairs, still walking without a sound. Just as Mr. Daddles reached the foot of the stairs, the noise began again. The long-drawn, sawing sound, and then the "yop, yop, yop" so loud that it nearly made us fall over backwards in surprise. There was no possible doubt from what place it came. It was from the room nearest the tall clock.
Mr. Daddles instantly blew out the candle, and then we all stepped very carefully to the threshold, and looked in. The room was a library, with books from the floor to the ceiling. The gas was lighted, but turned down low, and there were the smouldering embers of a fire on the hearth. Seated in an arm chair in front of the fire, with his feet up in another chair, was a big, fat policeman. He was sound asleep, with his coat unbuttoned, his gray helmet on the floor beside him, and his brass buttons and badge glittering in the gas-light. On a couch at the other side of the room lay another policeman, in his shirt-sleeves. He, too, was asleep, his mouth was open, and from it came the most outrageous snores I ever heard.
"Whee-e-e—yar-r-r-r—yaw-w-w—yop, yop, yop," he would go. And then he would begin it again, and go through it once more.
We looked at this spectacle for about twenty seconds. Then we all turned around, and tip-toed back, through the hall, and into the dining-room.