Constable Applebee looked after him till he was swallowed up in the prevailing gloom, and then resumed his duties. "What a chap that is!" he ruminated. "You can't mention a subject he ain't up in. That notion of his of falling asleep and waking up in fifty years ain't half a bad one. He does put ideas into a man's head. It's an education to talk to him." Dick did not hesitate as to his route. Turning the corner of Shore Street he walked to Deadman's Court, and through it into Catchpole Square, where he paused before the house of Samuel Boyd. "No midnight oil burning there," he mused, his eyes searching the windows for some sign of life. "The place is as still as death itself. I'll try Mrs. Death's dodge. If Mr. Boyd comes down I'll ask him if he has a room to let." He smiled at the notion, and applied himself to the knocker. But though he knocked, and knocked vigorously again and again, and threw stones at the upper panes of glass, and listened at the door, he heard no movement within the house. "There's a mystery inside these walls," said Dick, "and I'll pluck out its heart, or know the reason why. But how to obtain an entrance? The adjoining houses are empty. Is there a door loose in one of them?" There was no door loose; even if there had been, Dick, upon reflection, did not see how it would have been of assistance to him. There was a dead wall at the back of the house. "That way, perhaps," said Dick. He left the Square, and groped in the direction of the dead wall. It was about ten feet in height--a smooth expanse of cement, with not a foothold in it by which he could mount to the top. A rope with a grapnel at the end would meet the case, and Dick determined to procure one, and pay another visit to the place the following night.