Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

The pawnbroker picked up the ornate clock and set it on the back shelf. Just as he did, the clock made a whirring, grinding noise. A tiny gold door at the top of the clock flew open and a golden mannikin popped out, bowed and… spoke!

“Five o’clock and the day is nearly done” the mannikin said in a singsongy metallic voice.

Sam Cragg’s eyes were popping. Johnny too, was staring. He watched the mannikin bow again and pop back into his hole, the golden door closing upon him.

“I’m getting to like it, myself,” said the pawnbroker. “If I didn’t need the money… I’d just as soon keep it.”

Johnny moistened his lips. “You can’t! We… we’ll be back tomorrow with the money.”

He picked up the pawn ticket that the broker had laid on the counter and put it in his pocket.

When they reached the sidewalk, Sam Cragg whistled. “A talking clock, Johnny! Did you hear it?”

“No wonder Uncle Joe gave the Kid two hundred bucks on it… Why, did you see the jewels on the face? That clock’s worth a good many times two hundred bucks… even if it didn’t talk. I’ll be—”

A man who had been leaning against a mailbox straightened and stepped in front of them. “Hi, boys,” he said.

Johnny stopped. Beside him, Sam Cragg was breathing hoarsely.

The stranger was a heavy set, dark-complexioned man of about forty-five. A sardonic smile twisted his face. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“For who?” asked Johnny.

“Why,” said the other, “for John Smith and John Jones. Catch on? Shall we go somewhere and talk it over?”

“Somewhere?”

“Oh,” said the heavy-set man. “I’m only a private dick. Jim Partridge is the name. I’ve got a room in the Brownfield across the street. Shall we go over?”

“I don’t like private dicks,” Sam Cragg said, truculently.

“Well,” said Jim Partridge, “if it comes to that, do you like Headquarters dicks better? If you do…”

“We’ll listen to you,” said Johnny. “Come along, Sam.”

The Brownfield was a second-rate hotel of eight floors. Partridge’s room was on the top floor, the last room at the end of the corridor. He unlocked it and switched on a light inside, for the room opened on an airshaft.

He got a bottle of whisky from a dresser drawer and poured out about three fingers into a water tumbler. He held the glass out to Johnny, who shook his head. “I’m on the wagon this week.”

Sam Cragg also refused and Partridge opened his mouth and dumped the stuff down his throat. He poured out four fingers more, and holding the glass, sat down in a rickety rocking chair. Sam Cragg leaned against the bathroom door and Johnny seated himself on the sagging bed.

“We’re listening, Jim Partridge.”

Jim Partridge nodded. “To make a short story even shorter I want the pawn ticket you swiped from young Tom Quisenberry up there in Minnesota. That’s all I want.”

Johnny pursed up his lips. “Since you like it short, the answer is — uh-uh!”

“I thought you’d say that,” replied Partridge. “All right. I’ll play it your way. Old Simon Quisenberry shoved off yesterday. The Kid went off before the old man — so the clock reverts to the estate. I’m representing the estate.”

“Tom’s father, Eric Quisenberry?”

“The estate,” repeated Jim Partridge. “Now, I don’t think you boys are any mysterious strangers. I think you’re just a couple of above-the-average bo’s down on your luck. You just happened to be in that can when the boy was yowling. You saw a good thing and you took advantage of it. But… it’s no soap. So, come across, boys.”

Johnny locked his hands behind his head and leaned back on the bed. He looked up at the dirty ceiling. “Well, maybe we will, Partridge. But just to satisfy my curiosity, tell me some more about yourself. How’d you know the clock was in the pawnshop across the street?”

Partridge grunted. “I guess you haven’t been around much. I’m pretty good in my line. Although I’ll admit the Kid didn’t leave much of a trail. It took me a month to trace him this far.”

“A month?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve been tracing the Kid ever since he left home and the old man discovered he’d taken the clock with him.”

“But last week the authorities of that Minnesota town got in touch with his family. How come you didn’t hop to Minnesota?”

“I was after the clock, not the boy. He didn’t have it with him up there.”

“You weren’t up in Brooklands, Minnesota, at all?”

Partridge smiled ironically. “Was I supposed to be up there?… You came right here, to me.”

“That’s right. How’d you know we would?”

“I read the papers. After you bumped the boy, you burned the roads getting away from there. That meant you had the ticket… But what took you so long?”

“It was a tough road. Well, I’ve made up my mind, Partridge.”

The private detective drained his glass and set it on the edge of the dresser. He leaned forward. “Let’s have it.”

“I made up my mind,” Johnny said deliberately. “No.”

Jim Partridge twitched. His hand went under his coat lapel, came out with a .38 automatic. He grinned. “I made up my mind — yes.”

Johnny Fletcher sat up. The pillow he had gripped in both hands came up with him, sailed over his head — simultaneously with the water glass Sam Cragg had picked up from inside the bathroom and was hurling at Jim Partridge.

The pillow distracted Partridge and the water tumbler hit his jaw and smashed with a pop and shatter. Partridge gasped and fell forward out of the rocking chair.

“Nice teamwork,” said Johnny leaping up.

Sam Cragg scooped up the .38 from the floor, where it had fallen from Partridge’s limp hand. Partridge squirmed and moaned. Johnny straightened him out. “You didn’t break his jaw, Sam,” he said, “but he’ll be drinking soup for a few days… Throw the gun in the bathroom. We don’t want to be bothered with it. Come on!…”

At the first street corner, Johnny bought a newspaper and stepped into a convenient doorway. “I think it’s about time we caught up on the Quisenberry family. If that bird, Partridge, wasn’t lying about Old Simon Quisenberry dying, there ought to be something in this about him — and the family.”

He found it on Page 2, almost an entire column, under the heading:

Johnny’s eyes skimmed through the story. Stripped of verbiage, it told simply that Simon Quisenberry, wealthy manufacturer of the famous Simple Simon Clocks, had died at his Hillcrest, New York, home, after a lengthy illness. The account hinted that his passing might have been accelerated by the shocking news of the murder of his grandson, Tom Quisenberry, several days previously while a prisoner in a Minnesota prison.

There was a brief resume of Simon Quisenberry’s life. His hobby was touched upon for two paragraphs. Simon Quisenberry had invested a fortune in rare and unusual clocks; his collection was said to be the most valuable in existence, numbering among it many famous timepieces. The prize of his collection was a talking clock, for which Simon Quisenberry had once refused fifty thousand dollars.

Johnny Fletcher whistled when he came to that. “Fifty grand! And the Kid hocked it for two hundred bucks. I only hope that pawnbroker doesn’t read this. He’s liable to go south with the clock.”

Sam Cragg sniffed. “That’s a lot of malarkey. No clock’s worth fifty G’s. They always exaggerate those things. Like guys who get held up. They squawk to the cops that they were robbed of two bucks in cash and a diamond ring worth at least two thousand — and two grand isn’t hay.”