Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

“They all do,” Johnny said, unhappily. “They want to scratch dirt over me. I’ve been sleeping and they’re burying me. Well…”

The tap dancers had finished and the orchestra was playing a dance number. Couples were moving onto the tiny dance floor. Johnny went over to the Rusk-Tamarack table. “Are you ready to try that dance, Miss Rusk?” he asked, stiffly.

She got up and he led her to the floor. Johnny hadn’t danced in almost three years, but it made no difference. No one else was dancing. They couldn’t, on that crowded little floor. They merely shuffled and swayed.

“I saw you talking to Bonita,” Diana Rusk said into Johnny’s ear as they began to shuffle. “Did you know that she left Twelve O’Clock House this afternoon?”

“Ah! Tit for tat. Did you know that the man with her is Jim Partridge, her ex-husband?”

He felt shock ripple through her body. “I don’t understand. I thought she and… Cornish… Eric discharged Cornish this morning and when she left later…”

“I’ll tell you something else,” said Johnny, deliberately. “The girl who sang a while ago — Vivian Dalton — she’s the daughter of Jim and Bonita Partridge.”

“Why, I didn’t know she had a daughter! Eric never told Mo—”

“Your mother? Maybe Bonita forgot to tell Eric. It seems Jim raised her, after the divorce. Or she raised Jim. It’s a question. Imagine a cheap, second-rate private detective having a daughter like that.”

She was silent a moment, then said, “I suppose you wondered why I came to a place like this, after…”

“No,” he said, “I wasn’t wondering. You hadn’t seen the Kid in months…”

“Oh, it’s not that. I… you’ve caught me a couple of times today. You know about Mother and Eric. Well, during the quarrel between Eric and Bonita there was a telephone call for her and he overheard her agree to meet someone at this place.”

Johnny screwed up his face. “He asked you to come here and find out who she was meeting?”

“Oh, no! Eric wouldn’t do a thing like that. He just happened to let it drop talking to Mother. Coming was my own idea. You see… I decided I wanted that clock, after all.”

“Ah! You figure if anyone stole it, it was Bonita?”

“Why not? That’s all she was waiting around for… money! I didn’t particularly want the clock myself, but I most certainly didn’t want Bonita to have it. You probably know that I don’t care much for her. I blame her for… for Tommy’s running off.”

“She made it warm for him at home?”

“Warm is a mild word. She knew that Tommy was his grandfather’s favorite and she tried her best to estrange them. Then after Tommy left, she started in on Eric. And… and all the while she was carrying on with that estate manager, Cornish.”

“Cornish seems to have lost out,” Johnny remarked. “Either that or Jim Partridge has smelled out some money somewhere and she wants to get in on it. Partridge is a very capable customer. I’m waiting for him to pull a rabbit out of the hat right now. Sam and I are here tonight because of him. At least, I think so…”

At that moment the music stopped. Johnny took Diana’s arm and led her back to where Tamarack was sitting at their table. The sales manager of the Quisenberry Clock Company had his elbows propped up on the table and his chin in his cupped hands.

He did not get up. “Sit down a minute, Fletcher,” he invited, sullenly. “I’d like to have you tell me about your game.”

“Game, Mr. Tamarack?” Johnny asked, mockingly. “I’m not playing any games.”

“Then what are you doing? Wasn’t that a game, coming down to the office, pretending to be a big clock buyer from out west? You’re not a detective, so why should you be interested in all this?”

Johnny pulled up a chair from an adjoining table and seated himself.

“Look, Tamarack,” he said, seriously, “I met Tom Quisenberry up in Minnesota. I got to like him and he trusted me. He’d had some tough breaks, but he got a worse one — he lost his life. I’m playing this game, as you call it, because I think I can bring to justice the person who killed Tom Quisenberry…”

“But you and your friend claimed that a tramp had killed Tom. That Minnesota tramp would hardly be here in New York, would he?”

“Why not? The Talking Clock’s here. That man who was disguised as a tramp—”

“Whoa!” exclaimed Tamarack. “You’re not going to say that the tramp wasn’t a tramp at all, but someone close to the Quisenberry family, disguised as a tramp?…”

“I was going to say exactly that. What’s wrong with it?”

Wilbur Tamarack cocked his head to one side and looked derisively at Johnny. Then he turned to Diana Rusk, who was staring at Johnny, her lips pressed into a thin, straight line.

“What do you think, Diana?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to think. But I do know that I met Mr. Fletcher in Minnesota and I’ve a pretty fair idea of what he went through to get from there to here, just to… just to give me something that he thought belonged to me.”

“Thanks,” said Johnny. He got up.

Wilbur Tamarack’s face reddened down to the line of his collar. “I didn’t know you felt like that about it, Diana.”

“I do. Now you know.”

Johnny smiled at her and turned away. Then he wheeled back. “That heavy-set fellow just coming; that’s Lieutenant Madigan of the Homicide Squad. I’m afraid he’s here on business… If I were you, I’d clear out!”

He smiled and walked briskly back to his own table.

“Get under the table, Sam! An old friend’s just come in.”

Sam ducked low and almost did get down under the table. “’S too late,” Johnny muttered.

He pretended to see the detective for the first time. “The house is pinched! It’s Lieutenant Madigan…”

“Fletcher! And Cragg! I thought you birds had gone out into the Bible belt to scalp the natives.”

Johnny shook hands with the detective. “They scalped us, pal.”

“You don’t look it. You must be holding heavy, hanging around night clubs.”

Johnny winked. “If you only knew…”

“Don’t tell me. I’ve got enough troubles now. Mmm, there’s my customer.”

“You mean Jim Partridge?”

Lieutenant Madigan, turning away, whirled back on Johnny. “You know Partridge?”

“Uh-huh. His wife, too. I mean ex-wife. That’s her with him.”

A look of consternation spread across the detective’s face. “Don’t tell me,” he whispered. “Don’t tell me that you’re mixed in the Quisenberry case?”

Johnny looked down at his hands. “I was figuring on solving the case… for you.”

Lieutenant Madigan blinked as if an invisible fist had struck him in the face. “I don’t know why these things happen to me. I only got in this by accident, because the chief of police of Hillcrest happens to be an old buddy and he called me up and asked me as a personal favor to look into some things here in the city. And now I find that you’re in it, knee deep… All right, what do you know? Partridge will hold a minute.”

He sat down heavily in the chair that had been used recently by Vivian Dalton.

“Why,” said Johnny. “I could tell a better story if you would tell me what’s happened this evening.”

“What makes you think anything’s happened?”

“Because Partridge told me so less than ten minutes ago. Said I’d be reading it in the papers.”

“Well, it’s out already, so I’ll tell you. The Quisenberry estate manager, a fella named Cornish, has been knocked off.”

Johnny inhaled. “Where?”

“On the place.”

“How long ago? That’s important, Madigan.”