Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Buried Clock

“Heavens, yes. What time is it?”

“Around four.”

“Gosh, I must have been asleep for a couple of hours.”

“Not much over an hour, I guess. Did you go to sleep right after I left you?”

“Yes. I–I felt as though someone had pulled a plug in my feet and let all my vitality run out.”

They both laughed. “And you’re feeling better now?”

“Like a million dollars! That nap brought back my strength... Ready to start back?”

“Uh huh, if you are.”

He raised himself to a sitting position, shook out the coat, asked, “What’s the clockwork mechanism for, Adele?”

“What clockwork mechanism?”

“I don’t know. It probably regulates something. You can hear it over at the corner of the rock. That’s why I moved.”

He caught the significance of her glance and laughed outright. “Do you really think I have spells of delirium?”

She joined his laughter at once, but her laughter lacked spontaneity.

Slightly irritated, Harley said, “You can hear it for yourself, over at that corner of the rock.”

She bent down, more as a courtesy than out of curiosity, quite evidently expecting to hear nothing.

He was watching her face when her detachment gave way to a sudden flare of puzzled bewilderment.

“That’s what I meant,” Harley said with dignity.

“It sounds — Harley, it sounds like a clock! It is a clock! It’s right here!”

He scooped away the pine needles, clearing a small section of earth, and disclosed the lid of a lacquered tin box which had been buried with great care in the soil. He raised the lid.

Within the box, held securely upright by wooden blocks, a small-sized alarm clock was ticking steadily. It was, Harley saw, a clock made by one of the best-known manufacturers. Aside from the peculiar bracing, there seemed to be nothing unusual in its appearance. There were two small holes in the lacquered box.

Harley consulted his watch. “It’s exactly twenty-five minutes slow. You wouldn’t think it would be that far off. It’s a good grade of clock. Notice this lid. It’s almost flush with the ground. Just a few pine needles and a little moss have been placed over it.”

“What a strange way to bury a clock!” Adele exclaimed.

Raymand laughed. “I don’t know just what is the standard of normal in clock-burying. Personally, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a buried clock. Are we—”

The sound of an automobile engine reached their ears, the motor of a car that was climbing rapidly.

Harley listened, said, “Sounds to me as though they’re taking the road up here. Let’s just drop the clock back into the box, put the pine needles over it, and stroll up toward the cabin. Perhaps whoever is coming in that car will—”

“Go ahead,” she said. “You’ll have to hurry.”

Harley dropped the lid back on the box, deftly replaced the pine needles and little fragments of moss. “All ready,” he said, taking Adele’s arm.

Momentarily a clump of brush masked them as a car swung around the curve in the roadway to emerge on the little plateau. For a moment it was merely an indistinct object moving through the afternoon shadows cast by the trees. Then, as it debouched into a sun-flecked opening, it resolved itself into a two-tone blue coupe.

“It’s Jack Hardisty’s car!” Adele exclaimed.

Abruptly the car came to a stop. The door opened. Jack Hardisty scrambled out to the needle-carpeted clearing.

Adele Blane’s hand rested on Harley’s arm as he started to move out from behind the brush. “Don’t! Wait here, please!”

They stood motionless, watching Hardisty reach into the interior of the car, pull out a long-bladed garden spade, and start toward the outcropping of rock. Then he stopped abruptly as he saw the indistinct figures behind the brush.

For a moment the pair were gripped in that rigid immobility that comes with discovery. Then they broke into the stiff action pattern of those who are trying consciously to act naturally — and making a dismal failure of it.

“Walk out from behind the brush as though we hadn’t seen him,” Adele coached in a low voice.

Harley Raymand felt the pressure of her hand on his arm. They moved awkwardly from behind the brush into the patch of afternoon sunlight. From the corner of his eye, Harley saw Jack Hardisty hastily push the spade back into the car. Adele, now in plain sight, registered a surprise which, to Harley’s self-conscious embarrassment, seemed as obvious as the overdone pantomime acting of the silent screen.

“Why, there’s a car — it’s Jack!”

She had raised her voice so it would carry, and her attempt at surprise left Harley with no alternative save to follow suit.

Hardisty came walking toward them.

He was narrow across the shoulders, pinched in the face, but his double-breasted gray suit had the unwrinkled neatness which is found only in the clothes worn by thin men whose pores exude a minimum of body moisture. His nose was prominent, high-bridged, and supported bowless glasses.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed. “It’s our hero returned from the wars! How are you, Harley? Hello, Adele.”

The hearty, man-to-man enthusiasm of Jack Hardisty was overdone. He hadn’t the capacity of lusty emotions, and his attempt to put punch into his greeting was so synthetic it carried its own stigma of insincerity.

Harley Raymand couldn’t bring himself to respond to Hardisty’s vociferous cordiality. Adele Blane held herself aloof, and the first rush of sentences stagnated into a slow-flowing trickle of conversation.

“Well,” Hardisty said, “I want to get on up to the cabin. Lost my favorite knife when I was up here a week ago... Thought I might have left it out around the grounds, or perhaps it dropped down behind the cushions in that big chair.”

“A week ago,” Adele said musingly. “Why, I didn’t think anyone had been up here for ages. The cabin didn’t look as though it had even been opened.”

“Oh, I didn’t straighten it up any, just ran up for a few hours’ rest... Like to get away from the noises and the blare of radios. It’s peaceful up here, helps you reach a decision when—”

He became abruptly silent.

Adele said with dignity, “We were just leaving. I was looking the place over. Dad is coming up tomorrow night. Are you ready, Harley?”

He nodded.

“Hope you find your knife,” Harley said politely, as they started toward the place where Adele had left her car.

Hardisty became instantly effusive. “Thanks, old man! Thanks a lot! Hope that arm doesn’t give you any trouble. Take care of yourself. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Take it easy, boy. Take it easy.”

It was not until after they had reached the foot of the grade and were on the straight stretch leading to Kenvale, that Adele suddenly gave vent to her feelings. “I hate him,” she said.

“He’d do a lot better if he acted naturally,” Harley agreed. “Someone’s sold him on the idea of impressing people with his personality. He just hasn’t that kind of a personality. It’s as though a dummy tried to do a strip tease.”

“It isn’t that,” she said. “I can stand that stuff, because I think he has an inferiority complex; but it’s what he’s done to Father.”

Harley started to ask a question then thought better of it.

Adele said, “He’s short over ten thousand dollars at his bank. You know as well as I do, it was Dad’s money and Dad’s influence that got him in over there.”

“I’m afraid I’m a little out of touch with things,” Harley apologized.

“Dad started a bank in Roxbury, made a six-thousand-dollar-a-year job for Jack — just because he was Milicent’s husband.”