because of the assistance the hall clock brought to his bewildered ears.
For the hall clock--a big, dignified piece of furniture with a deep
note--happened just then to strike the hour of two in the morning, and
there was a considerable interval between the two notes. He first heard
the step far below in the act of leaving the flagged hall for the
staircase; then the clock drowned it with its first stroke, and perhaps a
dozen seconds later, when the second stroke had died away, he heard the
step again, as it passed from the top of the staircase on to the
polished boards of the landing. The owner of the step, meanwhile, had
passed up the whole length of the staircase in the interval, and was now
coming across the landing in a direct line towards his bedroom door.

"It _is_ a step, I suppose," it seems he muttered to himself, as with
head partially raised above the blankets he listened intently. "It's a
_step_, I mean...?" For the sound was more like a light tapping of a
little hammer than an actual step--some hard substance drumming
automatically upon the floor, while yet moving in advance. He recognized,
however, that there was intelligence behind its movements, because of the
sense of direction it displayed, and by the fact that it had turned the
sharp corner of the stairs; but the idea presented itself in fugitive
fashion to his mind--Heaven alone knows why--that it might be some
mechanical contrivance that was worked from the hall by a hand. For the
sound was too light to be the tread of a person, yet too "conscious" to
be merely a sound of the night operating mechanically. And it was unlike
the noise that the feet of any animal would make, any animal that he
could think of, that is. A four-footed creature suggested itself to his
mind, but without approval.

The puzzling characteristics of the sound, therefore, contradictory as
they were, left him utterly perplexed, so that for some little time he
could not make up his mind whether to be frightened, interested or
merely curious.

This uncertainty, however, lasted but a moment or two at the most, for an
appreciable pause outside his door was next followed by a noise of
scratching upon the panels, as of hands or paws, and then by the
shuffling of some living body that was flattening itself in an attempt to
squeeze through the considerable crack between door and flooring, and so
to enter the room.

And, hearing it, Spinrobin this time was so petrified with an
insta