Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Buried Clock

“I’ll keep you company,” Lola Strague said. “I feel somewhat the same about tunnels.”

Burt Strague hesitated for a moment as though trying to find some excuse to stay with them, but Lola said sharply, “Go on in, Burt. Stay with the men.”

Rodney Beaton, Burt Strague, Harley Raymand, Paul Drake and Perry Mason entered, walked to the far end of the tunnel. It was Rodney Beaton’s flashlight that showed the significant excavation at the end.

“Looks as though someone had been getting ready to bury something here,” Beaton said, indicating a shallow hole in the loose rock fragments which marked the end of the tunnel.

“Or,” Mason said, “as though something had been buried and then dug up again.”

Beaton became thoughtfully silent.

Drake glanced quickly at Perry Mason.

Mason swung his flashlight around the face of the tunnel. “Don’t see any shovel here,” he said.

All the flashlights explored the face of the tunnel.

“That’s right,” Burt Strague said, “there isn’t any shovel.”

“What’s more,” Mason pointed out, “this excavation wasn’t made with an ordinary shovel. It was made with a garden spade with a six-and-a-half- or seven-and-a-half-inch blade... You can see an imprint here of the whole blade.”

Beaton bent forward. “Yes,” he said, “and—”

Mason touched his shoulder. “I think,” he announced, “we’ll leave this bit of evidence just the way it is. Come on out — and let’s try to keep from touching anything.”

They walked silently out of the tunnel, explained the situation to Lola Strague and Myrna Payson.

Mason said, “I’d like to take a look at this lower trail that goes down by Beaton’s cabin... I take it that this mining tunnel is in Kern County.”

“Oh yes,” Beaton said. “It’s well over the line.”

“About how far?” Mason asked.

“Oh, I’d say a good half mile. Why? Would it make any difference?”

“It might,” Mason conceded enigmatically.

Beaton said, “I’d better lead the way from here on. I reset the camera that caught the picture of Burt Strague on the trail. And if you don’t mind, we’ll circle around when we come to that point.”

Beaton went first down the trail, walking with long swinging strides, moving with an easy rhythm that covered ground rapidly.

After almost three hundred yards of walking down a good trail, Beaton slowed his pace, said, “The camera’s right ahead. There it is.”

His flashlight played on a camera set on a tripod, a synchronized flashbulb attached to one side of the shutter.

“How is that tripped?” Mason asked.

“I use a small silk thread stretched across the trail,” Beaton said.

“And I blundered right through it,” Burt Strague observed.

“Yes, here are your tracks,” Raymand said, “—and you certainly were moving right along.”

He indicated the tracks of Burt Strague’s distinctive cowboy boots, tracks swinging along with the even regularity of a man hurrying along a mountain trail.

Burt Strague said impulsively, “I was worried about Sis... I guess I acted a little foolish tonight, Rod. Forgive me, will you?”

Beaton’s big hand shot out and clasped Burt Strague’s. “Forget it. Your sister’s rather a precious article, and I don’t blame you for wanting to keep an eye on her.”

Swiftly moving developments today characterized the Jack Hardisty murder case as one of the most baffling that has ever confronted local authorities.

Late yesterday afternoon, it was pointed out by the sheriff’s office that the buried clock which Harley Raymand, an Army man invalided home, claims to have discovered near the scene of the murder, was set to what is known as sidereal, or star time.

Astronomers state that sidereal time is distinctly different from civil time, gaining a whole twenty-four hours during the course of a year. If, therefore, as now seems probable, the murderer of Jack Hardisty chose a moment for perpetrating his crime which would be under the most auspicious stellar influences, authorities feel they have a very definite clue.

The Bugle has commissioned one of the leading astrologers to cast the horoscope of Jack Hardisty. Jack Hardisty was born on July 3rd, which according to astrologists, makes him a ‘Cancer,’ and astrologists point out that persons born under the sign of Cancer are divided into two classes — the active and the passive. They are thin-skinned, hypersensitive, and suffer deeply from wrongs, real or fancied. They are at times irrational in their emotions, and subject to ill health.

With recent developments indicating that the crime may have been committed either in Kern County, or so near the border of Los Angeles and Kern Counties that either county may have jurisdiction, the district attorney of Kern County is launching an independent investigation...

Developments in the Hardisty murder case moved today with bewildering rapidity.

A person who is in close touch with the situation, but who wishes his name withheld, stated positively that Jack Hardisty had in his possession, at the time of his death, a large sum of money. There is a rumor that this money may have been removed from a Roxbury bank, where Hardisty had been employed up to the time of his death.

The sheriff’s office, making a search of the Hardisty residence, was confronted with an antique locked desk. Because this was valuable as an antique Vincent P. Blane, the father-in-law of the victim, insisted that the lock should not be forced, but that officers should get a key either from Mrs. Hardisty or from Adele Blane. An attempt was made to secure a passkey, but because the antique writing desk had been recently fitted with a most modem lock, all efforts to open it in the usual routine manner proved futile.

Placing George Crane, a deputy constable and merchant patrol of Roxbury, in charge, police started trying to locate a key which would fit the lock. Mrs. Hardisty, who has steadfastly refused to make any statement concerning the case, finally consented to permit the authorities to use her key in opening the desk.

Shortly before nine o’clock, however, the telephone at police headquarters in Roxbury rang insistently. The voice of a man whom the police have not as yet been able to identify, advised them that he had heard the sound of a revolver shot at the Hardisty residence. Officers Frank Marigold and Jim Spencer, making a quick run to the scene, found George Crane unconscious from a blow with a blackjack administered a few minutes earlier by some unidentified woman at whom Crane had taken a shot, and whom he may have wounded. It was reported that Mrs. Hardisty’s lawyer and private detective were also on the premises at the time. They were permitted to leave the premises without being searched. The writing desk had been forced open, and papers lay in a litter of confusion over the floor (see photograph on page three).