Chapter XVII—Who Caught the Mouse-Trap?

The night after my birthday party, at which the hostess was clothed in pink pyjamas and a coral bath-robe and one of her guests wore a crêpe de chine nighty, I slept badly. In the first place I was bruised and sore from my fall and in the second, frankly frightened. I kept imagining that I heard things, as you do when the lights are out and the world is still outside. My furniture creaked as the damp, night air crept in. A board snapped, then my radiator clanked. I used my flashlight about two hundred and eight tim…