Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Buried Clock

“What do you mean?” he asked, managing to seat himself in such a position as to conceal the exact point in the rock seam from which he had caught the reflected light.

“Oh, you know. Are you going to live a leisurely life, or run in the breathless pursuit of success?”

“I don’t know. Right now, I’m getting acquainted with myself, taking a breathing spell. I haven’t blueprinted the future.”

She picked up a little twig and traced aimless designs on the surface of the rock. “This war seems sort of a nightmare. It will pass, and people will wake up.”

“To what?” Harley asked.

She looked up from her design tracing. “Sometimes,” she admitted, “I’m afraid of that.”

They were silent for a space of time, while Harley watched the creeping shadow of a pine limb move from her shoulder up to the lobe of her ear.

“Somehow,” she said, “society got off on a wrong track. The thing people pursued as success wasn’t success at all.”

Harley kept silent, clothing himself in the luxury of lazy lethargy.

“Look at Mr. Blane,” she went on. “He’s an exponent of that system — driving himself. Now he’s around fifty-five. He has high blood pressure, pouches under his eyes, a haunted expression. His motions are jerky and nervous... You can’t think that life was intended to be that way. He never relaxes, never takes a good long vacation; he has too many irons in the fire. And they say he isn’t getting anywhere; that the income taxes are taking all he makes, and keeping his nose to the grindstone.”

Harley felt that loyalty to Vincent Blane demanded speech. He aroused himself to say, “All right, let’s look at Mr. Blane. I happen to know something about him. His parents died when he was a child. His first job paid him twelve dollars a week. He educated himself while he was working. He’s responsible for two banks, one in Kenvale, one in Roxbury. He’s put up a big department store. He gives employment to a large number of people. He built up the community.”

“And what does it get him?” Lola Strague asked.

Harley thought that over, said, “If you want to look at it that way, what does it get us? He’s a representative American, typical of the spirit of commercial progress which has changed this country from a colony to a nation.”

“Are you,” she asked abruptly, “going to work for him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you working for him now?”

“Is that — well, shall we say, pertinent?”

“You mean, is it any of my business?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t express it that way.”

“But that was what you meant?”

“No. I wondered if it might actually have some bearing.”

“On what?”

“On — well, your attitude toward me.”

Her eyes flashed quick interest, then were hastily averted as the end of the pine twig she was holding started scratching away at the rock again. “What were you doing out here?” she asked.

“When?”

“When I walked up just now.”

“Looking at the place where the clock had been.”

“And at something else on the rock,” she said.

“Were you watching me?”

“Only just as I moved up. And when you sat down you acted as though you were concealing something.”

He smiled at that, but said nothing.

“After all,” she said, “I can sit here just as long as you can, if you’re sitting on something to cover it up. It’ll still be there when you get up.”

“Of course, I could point out that you’re trespassing.”

“And eject me?”

“I might.”

“In that event, you’d have to get up. I doubt if anyone has ever ejected a trespasser sitting down.”

“And what makes you think I’m sitting here to conceal something?”

“I thought so when we started talking. I’m certain of it now.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise, when I accused you of it, you’d have jumped up and looked around at the rock to see if there actually was anything to conceal.”

“Perhaps I’m not as obvious as that.”

“Perhaps.”

“Very well,” he said, “you win,” and got up.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Something was reflecting the light.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything here.”

“It must be a piece of glass. I can’t understand anything else that — yes, there it is!”

“Looks like part of the lens from a pair of rimless glasses,” she said, as Harley turned the curved piece of glass around in his fingers.

He nodded. “It must have fallen into these pine needles. They cushioned the shock and prevented it from breaking; also held it propped at just the right angle so it reflected the sun’s rays just now.”

“What do you make of it?” she asked.

Harley dropped the glass into his pocket. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think it over.”

She laughed suddenly and said, “You’re a cool one.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

He judged the time was ripe for a counter-offensive. “Why,” he asked, “were you so upset when you learned Rodney Beaton was returning from town with Myrna Payson?”

Her face flamed into color. “That’s an unfair question. You’re insinuating that—”

“Yes?” Harley prompted as she ceased speaking abruptly.

She said, “It’s a personal, impertinent and unfair question.”

“You’ve been asking me questions,” he said, “about my plans, and—”

“Simply being sociable,” she interjected.

“And,” Raymand said, smiling, “trying to find out something about my future moves and how long I’d be here. Hence, my question. Are you going to answer it?”

She caught her breath, preparatory to making some indignant comment, then seemed abruptly to change her mind. “Very well,” she said with cold formality, “I will answer your question because apparently you think it’s relevant and material. If you think I’m jealous, you’re mistaken. I was merely piqued.”

“There’s a difference?” he asked.

“In my case, yes.”

“And why were you piqued?”

“Because Rodney Beaton had stood me up. We had a date to go out and patrol the trails together.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She said, “Rodney is getting a collection of photographs of nocturnal animals. He has three or four cameras rigged with flashguns, and clamps them on tripods in strategic places on the trails. During the early part of the evenings he’ll patrol the trails, finding the camera traps that have been touched off by passing animals. Then he’ll put in fresh plates, reset the shutter, and put in a new flashbulb.”

“And you accompany him?”

“At times.”

“And last night he had given you some specific invitation?”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that. It was just casual. He asked me if I was going to be doing anything, and I said no, and he said ‘if you’re around, we might take a look at the cameras,’ and I told him I’d be glad to. That’s what makes me angry. It wasn’t a definite date — and he’d evidently forgotten all about it. If he’d made a definite date with me, and then broken it to go to town with that... that... with Mrs. Payson, I’d at least know where I stood. But it was casual and informal, and he simply forgot all about it. That puts me in the position of having to pretend that I forgot all about it, too. It’s quite possible that Rodney will remember it later — and then it will be mutually embarrassing. And I think Mrs. Payson knew about it — and deliberately inveigled him into taking her to town. She’s a widow, one of the — oh, let’s not talk about her! Now then, that’s the whole story. You see, it’s a very commonplace affair. I think any young woman hates to be stood up... But I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m setting my cap for Mr. Rodney Beaton.”