Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

Johnny’s bluff almost collapsed, but he drew a deep breath and prepared to play it a little further. He twisted the cord about the package. And then, Diana Rusk could stand it no longer.

“How much will you pay, Mr. Bos?”

Johnny groaned. She had lost him the game. Bos wanted that clock and he would have paid for it. He had to pay. “I give you twenty-five thousand dollar,” Bos said.

“The gold in it’s worth more,” John said, caustically.

“You make joke,” Bos said, sharply. “Whole clock don’t weighing ten pound. Gold don’t worth five hundred dollar pound… I give t’irty t’ousand.”

“The other day you talked about seventy-five thousand.”

“Sure, but then we only… talking. Now, money…”

“Fifty thousand!” Johnny cried.

“T’irty-five.”

Diana Rusk started to open her mouth and Johnny roared.

“Forty thousand and not a nickel less!”

Bos pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out a checkbook. Johnny leaned over. “Make it out to cash, then let Miss Rusk endorse it and you okay her signature.”

“Sure,” said Bos, smiling thinly. “And I calling bank, too? You don’t think I got the money?”

“Forty thousand isn’t sponges. We’ll make this all nice and legal. Here — I’ll write out a bill of sale. ‘One clock, known as the Quisenberry Talking Clock, a rare antique… $40,000.’ You sign this, Miss Rusk.”

The details finished, Johnny picked up the check and handed it to Miss Rusk. “Why don’t you run over to the bank with this, Miss Rusk? I’ve got another matter I want to talk to Mr. Bos about.”

“Of course. And — thank you, very much.”

She departed and Nicholas Bos shook his head cynically. “You are too soft, Mr. Fletcher. You don’t getting commission. And — you are poor bluffer. Don’t you know I would not have let you walk out of here with that clock?”

“I knew it, but she didn’t,” Johnny said, grimly. “Now about that bonus…”

The sponge man touched a button under his desk. A door at the side of the office opened and in came Carmella Genualdi, the loan-shark man.

Bos said: “Carmella, this is the wan who squawk to the police…”

Carmella took a gun out of his pocket. “The wise guy, eh? I got a good notion to—”

Bos shook his head. “You were getting tough, Mr. Fletcher?”

“No,” said Johnny. “I was getting out of here. As soon as you made that call to the bank.”

“I make him now.” Bos picked up the phone. “The bank, Miss Dimitrios.”

Johnny waited only long enough to hear the conversation between the bank manager and Bos, then he took his departure. He was glad to get away. Bos might have become impatient and pushed ahead the hands of the clock, to make it talk.

Back at the 45th Street Hotel, Johnny encountered Vivian Dalton stepping into the elevator. She had just come from the beauty parlor and looked like money from home.

“Hi, Johnny Fletcher!” she greeted him. “I was just going to stop in and see you and your pal.”

“The latchstring’s always out to you, Vivian. How’s your old man?”

“Jim? He’s ripping. But then he’s always that way. He and Bonita aren’t talking — again. They’ve always been that way. So everything’s fine.”

They reached the eighth floor and Johnny opened the door of Room 821. Sam Cragg bounced up from one of the beds.

“Vivian!” he cried. “I was just thinking about you.” His grin stretched from ear to ear.

“I hope they were nice thoughts, Sammy.”

“Pardon me,” Johnny said, sarcastically. “You were talking about your parents, Vivian. Why aren’t you broken up about the reconciliation falling through?”

“Reconciliation, hell!” exclaimed Vivian. “Mom had an angle and it didn’t work. She’s a gold digger, you know. Pop used to slap her ears down, but she’s gotten out of hand and he can’t do much with her these days. It’s okay by me.”

Johnny shook his head at the callous casualness of the Dalton girl. He said, “What’s new, otherwise?”

“Why, it’s lunchtime and I thought I’d let you suckers buy it for me.”

“We just had breakfast, but sit down a minute.”

She sat on the bed, took a jeweled cigarette case from her purse and stuck a cigarette between her red lips. She lit it with an expensive Ronson lighter.

Blowing out smoke, she said: “Speaking of angles, what’s yours in all this, Johnny Fletcher?”

“Same as your old man’s. Dough.”

“Uh-uh. Come clean, Fletcher. You two don’t care any more about money than I do for cotton stockings. Jim’s in it for money, yes. But not you two. You’re just as slap-happy without money.”

“Not me,” protested Sam Cragg.

“No? What would you do with money? Buy some magic gimmicks, or blow it on an oat burner?”

“Magic?” said Sam. “Say, I been practicing that cigarette trick—”

“Later, Sam,” Johnny said, quickly. “When you’ve bought a new handkerchief. Okay, Vivian, I’ll talk if you will. Why did you decoy us yesterday?”

She laughed. “I like that word, decoy. How much commission do you think I get on one bottle of beer, at the club?”

“Maybe none. I didn’t mean it that way. You wanted us to come to the club last night for a particular reason. Was it because you wanted to make sure we didn’t go out to Westchester County? Maybe to Hillcrest?”

She turned and flipped her cigarette stub through the open window, more than ten feet away. “Pop said he’d tried to soften up you two and hadn’t made a dent. He still wants to play with you.”

“Since last night?”

“Uh-huh. Bonita couldn’t help him, because she didn’t know anything.”

Johnny looked at her reproachfully. “You wouldn’t be covering up for your mother, would you?”

Vivian Dalton winked at him. “I would… if I wanted to cover up for her. But that’s straight, about her and Dad being on the outs again.”

She got up. “Well, if you won’t buy me that lunch, I’ll have to get it myself.”

“We’ll take a raincheck. Got to earn some money today.”

She nodded. “You won’t throw in with Jim? He says there’d be a nice split.”

“I’ll think about it. He’s waiting downstairs?”

“No. Cops are following him around. But you can call him at his office. He’s listed under the Partridge Detective Agency.”

She went out and Johnny threw himself on his bed. Sam walked up and down, clenching his big hands together and cracking his knuckles.

After a moment Johnny said, “Stop muttering about her. I know she’s got under your skin, but she’s got ice water in her veins.”

“I like ice water,” Sam snapped. “We couldda gone to lunch with her, anyway.”

Johnny sighed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Sam. I’ll solve this goddam case and collect a big, fat fee from somebody and then you can give the Vivian gal the grand rush. That make you happy? And after she’s gone through your roll, I’ll buy you a nice, strong rope and you can do the old rope trick.”

“A guy doesn’t mind dying after a good time. It’s the slow, starving to death that gets you…”

Johnny got up from the bed. “Well, let’s make the final assault. If this blitzkrieg fails I’m licked.”

“Where to this time?”

“The clock factory. Eric’s my last hope to find out what the Talking Clock said.”

They left the room and rode down to the lobby in the elevator.

As they stepped out, Eddie Miller grabbed Johnny’s arm and whispered. “Duck, quick, the boss just got some bad news.”

“What’s that, Eddie? It isn’t the first of the month.”

“What’s the first got to do with it? Oh, oh, you’re sunk!”