Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

“Maybe she stuck a ramrod down his back. Still… Taxi!”

“Taxis again?” exclaimed Sam. “With the bankroll the way it is?”

“There’s more where this came from. Driver, take us to Lexington and 60th.”

Twenty minutes later, Johnny paid the cabby a dollar and forty cents to Sam Cragg’s discomfiture.

“What’s up here that’s worth a buck forty?” he griped.

“The clock shop across the street. You wait here. I’m going in alone.”

Johnny crossed the street and entered the antique clock dealer’s shop. The proprietor exclaimed when he recognized Johnny.

“You have come back, eh? What do you want today?”

“Why, I thought I’d get some additional information on clocks. For that article, you know…”

“What article? What newspaper? Yesterday, after you left I thought about something interesting to tell you for that story and I called the Blade. You know what they told me?”

Johnny grimaced. “That I wasn’t working for them. Okay, I’ll come clean. I’m a detective, working on the Quisenberry case.”

“Why didn’t you say so yesterday? The other man did.”

“What other man?”

“The detective who was here in the afternoon. He didn’t give his name.”

“What’d he look like?”

The clock dealer shrugged. “How does a detective look? He didn’t wear a uniform.”

“What’d he want to know?”

“Don’t you know? Ain’t he from your office?”

“There’re a half dozen of us working on the case. It was probably Snodgrass who was here. Look, you told me yesterday you’d seen this clock on exhibition. I suppose you heard it talk, too?”

“Of course. It wasn’t a very good voice. Too tinny.”

“I’ve heard it once. I’m interested in knowing what the clock said, not how it said it. Would you remember any of the things it said, at the different hours? Three o’clock for example?”

The clock dealer screwed up his face. “I don’t remember anything particular. I heard it talk several different times. It wasn’t anything unusual. Platitudes.”

Johnny sighed. “Maybe I can refresh your memory. At five o’clock, the little man comes out and says: ‘Five o’clock and the day is nearly done’…”

“Yes, that’s the kind of stuff it says. Right after that, at six o’clock, it says something about ‘When the day is done and night begins to fall’.”

“And at three o’clock?” Johnny leaned forward, eagerly. “Try and remember that hour, will you?…”

“I can’t. I never paid any particular attention. Six o’clock was easy because that’s considered the end of the day and you have reminded me of what the clock said then, by quoting the five o’clock recitation. But…”

“Yes?”

The dealer snapped his fingers. “I may have it here! Yes! I remember now, the convention special reported it the last time Simon exhibited the clock, two years ago. I’ve got the magazines around here.”

He headed for the back of the room and opened a closet. “Yes, here they are. Copies of the American Hobbyist, for the last two years.”

Johnny flanked the counter. “Can I help you look?”

“Yes. Let’s see, the convention two years ago was in summer. July, I think. The report would be in the August issue. Look for August, 1938…”

The dealer scooped out a stack of the magazines and they began to rummage through them. It was Johnny who found the August, 1938, issue.

“Here it is!”

They spread the magazine out on the counter, their eager fingers turning the pages.

“Clock Exhibit!” read the dealer. “Here it is… yes, ‘Simon Quisenberry’s Talking Clock.’ At twelve o’clock it says: ‘Twelve o’clock. High noon and midnight. Rest ye weary…’ ”

“Three o’clock!” exclaimed Johnny. “ ‘Three o’clock. There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.’ ” Johnny exclaimed in consternation.

“Shakespeare! I remember now.”

“But it’s meaningless!” Johnny cried.

“Most of it is. I told you it didn’t say anything important.”

Johnny groaned. His eyes fell once more to the page. And then he exclaimed. “Look — five o’clock! ‘I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul’.”

“Henley,” the clock dealer prompted. “Mmm, I didn’t have six o’clock quite right. It says: ‘When night falls and the morning comes…’ ”

“This is wrong,” Johnny said. “The clock doesn’t say that at five o’clock.”

“How do you know it doesn’t?”

“Because I heard it. It said: ‘Five o’clock and the day is nearly done.’ ”

“You made a mistake. I heard the clock several times and I couldn’t remember exactly.”

“But I do remember. There’s no mistake. When I heard that clock talk, a week ago, it said: ‘Five o’clock and the day is nearly done.’ I remember distinctly.”

The clock dealer shrugged. “So what’s the difference? Maybe Simon had a couple of talking discs. Each different. The detective who was here yesterday asked about that.”

“Just what did he ask?”

“If it was possible to change the talking records in the clock, I told him, yes, although it’d be pretty hard to get the records made. They were metal discs, made of a gold alloy, if I remember right. The detective asked if I could make such a disc and I told him, no.”

“And then?”

“I suggested he try some of the phonograph recording places.”

Johnny straightened. “Look, sir, you have no use for this old magazine. How about loaning it to me?”

“You can have it on one condition. That you tell me the inside story of the Talking Clock when the case is all settled.”

“That’s a deal, Mister.”

Johnny rolled up the magazine, thanked the clock dealer for his help and left the store. Heading across the street, Sam Cragg came to meet him.

“Don’t look now, Johnny, but in the doorway of the cigar store behind me — to the right — there’s a bird been following us.”

“Following?” Johnny, despite Sam’s caution, shot a look at the cigar store.

A man stepped out. Johnny cried: “Old-Timer!”

“Old-Timer?” Sam blinked.

“The tramp from Minnesota… Come on!”

It was the tramp, no question about that. He was as ragged and filthy as ever. And like in Minnesota, he suddenly took to his heels with amazing swiftness when he saw Johnny and Sam descending upon him.

He reached the nearby corner of 60th Street, sixty feet ahead of them and when they rounded it, he had increased the distance to eighty or ninety feet.

“Goddamit!” Johnny panted. “He’s getting away again…”

He looked wildly over his shoulder for a taxi, but none was in sight. He gritted his teeth and put everything he had into running. But it was no use.

Old-Timer reached Third Avenue, a hundred and twenty feet ahead of them. He turned south and when Johnny reached the corner he had disappeared.

Johnny stopped and waited for Sam Cragg to catch up. “He’s gone again,” he said disgustedly. “We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. An old guy… Ah, hell!”

“He must be an Olympic champion the way he ran!” puffed Sam.

“We’ve solved one thing, though. Old-Timer did kill the Kid up in Minnesota. It’s no coincidence that he’s here in New York. But… how the devil did he pick us up this morning?”

“The Hotel. He probably followed us all the way to Bos’…”

“But only a few people know where we’re staying in New York. Let’s see, aside from Madigan, there’s Partridge, Eric Quisenberry, the Rusks, and Wilbur Tamarack probably.”

“What about the Greek?”