He thrust his legs in through the window, carefully holding up the sash with its jagged triangles of glass.  It will never be known how severely Bock was tempted by the extremities thus exposed to him, but he was an old dog and his martial instincts had been undermined by years of kindness.  Moreover, he remembered Aubrey perfectly well, and the smell of his trousers did not seem at all hostile.  So he contented himself with a small grumbling of protest.  He was an Irish terrier, but there was nothing Sinn Fein about him.

Aubrey dropped to the floor, and patted the dog, thanking his good fortune.  He glanced about the cellar as though expecting to find some lurking horror.  Nothing more appalling than several cases of beer bottles met his eyes.  He started quietly to go up the cellar stairs, and Bock, evidently consumed with legitimate curiosity, kept at his heels.

“Look here,” thought Aubrey.  “I don’t want the dog following me all through the house.  If I touch anything he’ll probably take a hunk out of my shin.”

He unlocked the door into the yard, and Bock obeying the Irish terrier’s natural impulse to get into the open air, ran outside.  Aubrey quickly closed the door again.  Bock’s face appeared at the broken window, looking in with so quaint an expression of indignant surprise that Aubrey almost laughed.  “There, old man,” he said, “it’s all right.  I’m just going to look around a bit.”

He ascended the stairs on tiptoe and found himself in the kitchen.  All was quiet.  An alarm clock ticked with a stumbling, headlong hurry.  Pots of geraniums stood on the window sill.  The range, with its lids off and the fire carefully nourished, radiated a mild warmth.  Through a dark little pantry he entered the dining room.  Still no sign of anything amiss.  A pot of white heather stood on the table, and a corncob pipe lay on the sideboard.  “This is the most innocent-looking kidnapper’s den I ever heard of,” he thought.  “Any moving-picture director would be ashamed not to provide a better stage-set.”

At that instant he heard footsteps overhead.  Curiously soft, muffled footsteps.  Instantly he was on the alert.  Now he would know the worst.

A window upstairs was thrown open.  “Bock, what are you doing in the yard?” floated a voice—­a very clear, imperious voice that somehow made him think of the thin ringing of a fine glass tumbler.  It was Titania.

He stood aghast.  Then he heard a door open, and steps on the stair.  Merciful heaven, the girl must not find him here.  What would she think?  He skipped back into the pantry, and shrank into a corner.  He heard the footfalls reach the bottom of the stairs.  There was a door into the kitchen from the central hall:  it was not necessary for her to pass through the pantry, he thought.  He heard her enter the kitchen.

In his anxiety he crouched down beneath the sink, and his foot, bent beneath him, touched a large tin tray leaning against the wall.  It fell over with a terrible clang.