"It's not a bad contrivance though, Crotchet. Its own weight, you see, restores it to its place again, and so there's no trouble with it."
"Oh dear, no. It's a what I calls a self-acting catch-'em-who-can sort o' machine. Yes, Sir Richard, I never did think that 'ere Todd was wery green. He don't know quite so much as we know; but yet he's a rum 'un."
"No doubt of it. Do you think, Crotchet, there is anything else in this attic to beware of?"
"Not likely; when he'd finished this here nice little piece of handywork, I dare say he said to himself—'This will catch 'em,' and so down stairs he toddled, and grinned like a monkey as has swallowed a whole nut by haccident, and gived himself a pain in the side in consekence. 'That'll catch 'em,' says he."
Mr. Crotchet seemed so much amused at the picture he drew to himself of the supposed exultation of Todd, that for some moments he did nothing but laugh. The reader must not suppose, however, that in the circumstances of peril in which they were, he indulged in a regular "Ha! ha!"—quite the contrary. He had a mode of laughing under such circumstances that was entirely his own, and which, while it made no noise, shook his huge frame as though some commotion had taken sudden possession of it, and the most ridiculous part of the process was the alarming suddenness with which he would become preternaturally serious again. But Sir Richard Blunt knew his peculiarities, and paid no attention to them, unless they very much interfered with business.
"We must not waste time. Come on, Crotchet."
Sir Richard walked to the door of the attic and tried it. It was as fast as though it had been part of the wall itself.
"So—so," he said. "Master Todd has taken some precautions against being surprised from the top of his house. He has nailed up this door as surely as any door was ever nailed up."
"Has he really, though?"
"Yes. Quick, Crotchet. You have your tools about you, I suppose."