Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Buried Clock

It was an hour before sunrise when he opened his eyes to find the air crisp with cold. He snuggled down into the warm blankets and amused himself by fastening his eyes upon one particular star, trying to keep it from receding to nothing in the growing light. But the star eluded him, vanished, and Harley couldn’t find it again. Smiling drowsily over his failure, he drifted off to sleep once more. The sun was warm on the porch when he finally awakened.

Harley knew as soon as he threw back the covers that he was feeling much stronger. The fresh mountain air had drained poisons from his system, and for the first time in weeks he actually wanted food — and lots of it.

He lit the oil stove, cooked coffee, eggs, bacon, toast and cereal — and then thought of the buried clock.

While the dishwater was heating, Harley went out to the porch, and then walked down the sloping, needle-carpeted grounds. He found the spot he wanted without difficulty and swept away the covering of pine needles.

The clock was ticking merrily away.

Harley compared it with his watch.

The clock was still exactly twenty-five minutes slow.

Harley replaced the box, carefully put the pine needles and moss back into place and returned to the cabin. The water was not yet hot enough for the dishes. There were no dishtowels in sight, but Harley remembered that linen was stored in a big cedar chest in the back bedroom. He opened the door of the bedroom, conscious of the fact that the chill of the night still clung to this room on the north side of the house. He was half-way to the cedar chest before he noticed that the bed was occupied.

For what must have been several seconds, Harley stood motionless with surprise, not knowing whether to withdraw quietly or to speak. Suppose Milicent or Adele had gone to the cabin, exhausted, had climbed into bed, knowing nothing of his subsequent arrival. Harley could sense complications.

The sleeper was facing the window, away from the door. The covers were pulled up in such a way that the head was completely concealed. Harley decided to get it over with.

“Good morning!”

The figure didn’t move.

Harley raised his voice, “I don’t want to intrude, but I’d like to know who you are.” The figure gave no sign of having heard.

Harley walked over to the bed, let his hand fall on the covers over the shoulder — and instantly knew something was radically wrong... He jerked with his right arm, pulling the motionless form toward him.

It was Jack Hardisty.

He had been dead for hours.

Perry Mason hummed a little tune as he strolled down the corridor to his office, moving with the leisurely, long-legged rhythm characteristic of him. Walking to meet the adventures of the day, he didn’t intend to be too hurried to enjoy them.

He latchkeyed the door of his private office, and caught Della Street’s smile as she looked up from the mail.

“What ho!” Mason said. “Another day... How about the dollar, Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

Della Street bowed with mock humility. “The dollar awaits, my lord.”

Mason lost his bantering tone. “Don’t tell me you’ve scared up a new case.”

“We have a potential client.”

“In the outer office?”

“No. He’s not the type who waits in outer offices.” Della Street consulted a memorandum on her desk. “He’s a Mr. Vincent P. Blane, a banker and department store owner at Kenvale. He called on long distance, three times within thirty minutes. The first two times he wouldn’t talk with anyone except Perry Mason. The third time he consented to talk with Mr. Mason’s secretary.”

Mason hung his hat in the closet, crossed over to the big desk, selected a cigarette from the office humidor, and said, “I don’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“He sounds pot-bellied and self-important. What does he want?”

“His son-in-law was murdered in a mountain cabin sometime last night.”

Mason scraped a match on the under side of the desk, devoted his attention to lighting the cigarette before asking, “Who’s elected as the official suspect?”

“No one.”

“Who’s nominated?”

“They haven’t even made a nomination.”

“Then what the devil does Blane want me for? I’m not a detective, I’m a lawyer.”

She smiled. “It seems there are several family skeletons Mr. Blane wants kept safely in the closet. Naturally, he didn’t dare say much on the phone. Both of Mr. Blane’s daughters were up at the cabin yesterday afternoon. Mr. Blane himself was also up there... And well, after all, the man has money.”

Mason said, “Oh, I suppose I’ve got to handle it, but it sounds like a legal chore, one of these uninspiring, routine family murders.”

Della Street once more consulted her memorandum. “There is, however, one redeeming feature,” she added, her eyes twinkling.

“Della, you’ve been holding out on me!” Mason charged.

“No. I only saved the dessert until last.”

“All right, let’s have the dessert.”

“A buried clock,” she said, “which is running about twenty-five minutes slow. It’s buried somewhere near the cabin where the murder was committed, a small-edition alarm clock in a lacquered box. It—”

Mason started for the cloak closet.

He called to Della Street as he grabbed his hat. “The clock does it... Come on. Let’s go!”

Mason was advised in Kenvale that the deputy sheriff, a representative of the coroner, Vincent Blane and Harley Raymand had left for the scene of the crime only a few minutes earlier; that Mason could probably catch up with them if he “stepped on it.”

Mason duly stepped on it, arriving at the cabin just as the little group was getting ready to leave the chill north bedroom where the body lay just as Raymand had left it.

Mason was acquainted with Jameson, the deputy sheriff, and so was permitted to join the group without question, a tribute to Mason’s reputation as well as Blane’s local influence.

The lawyer had a glimpse of a cold bedroom, rustic furniture, knotty pine walls, clothes thrown over a chair, shoes placed at the side of the bed, and the stiff, still form of the little man, who, in his lifetime, had tried so desperately to be a magnetic, dominant personality. Now, in death, he seemed shriveled to his true stature, a cold corpse in a cold bedroom.

Mason made a swift survey of the room. “Don’t touch anything,” the deputy warned.

“I won’t,” Mason assured him, studying the room carefully.

“He must have undressed, gone to sleep and been killed while he was sleeping,” the coroner’s representative said.

The deputy sheriff said, “Well he’s dead, all right, and it’s murder. I’m going to close this room up and leave things just as they are until someone from the Los Angeles office can get here... Now, let’s take a look at this buried clock — although I don’t see where it enters into the picture.”

The deputy ushered them out of the room, closed and locked the door, and followed Harley out to the warmth of the sloping, sun-bathed clearing.

Harley walked over to the granite rocks. “Now, the clock is buried right about here. You can hear it ticking if you listen.”

“Let’s take a look,” the deputy sheriff said.

Harley got down on his knees, scraped away moss and pine needles. He placed his ear to the ground, then straightened and looked puzzled. “I’m certain this is the place,” he said.

The deputy’s tone was frankly skeptical. “Doesn’t look as though anything had ever been buried there.”

“Perhaps it’s a little deeper,” Blane suggested.

Harley, scraping a wider clearing in the ground, said, “No, the lid of the box was quite close to the surface.”