Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

“Here’s your party.”

“Hello,” said Johnny. “Is this Uncle Joe’s Pawn Shop?”

“It sure is,” was the reply. “This is Uncle Joe talking; what can I do for you?”

“This is the New York Police Department calling. We’re working on a matter involving an article that was held by your store in pawn for some months and recently redeemed. The article in question was a talking clock…”

“Oh,” said Uncle Joe. “I remember that. But I gave you the information only an hour ago…”

“You gave us the information?” Johnny cried. “What information?”

“Why you called up to ask what it was that the Talking Clock said. What’s the matter with your department?”

“Nothing,” said Johnny. “But, uh, it happens that you spoke to our Lieutenant Madigan. An unfortunate accident has happened to him… He’s been murdered.”

“Murdered! Good heavens! Because of the… the information I gave him?”

“That’s right. Now, we’ve got to start all over. You remember what it was you told the lieutenant — I mean, what the Talking Clock said?”

“Of course. I had that clock in my shop for almost three months. I liked it so much I kept it wound up and it would talk every hour. In three months I got to remember everything it said…”

“Hold it,” said Johnny. “I want to write it down.” He picked up a pencil and reached for a pad. “Now, go ahead. Begin with twelve o’clock. What did it say, then?”

“It said: ‘Twelve o’clock. Midnight and high noon. Watch the hours. Time and tide wait for no man.’

“At one o’clock: ‘Fortune awaits him who heeds the hours.’ At two o’clock: ‘The time approaches and Fortune is nigh.’ At three o’clock…”

“Go ahead,” said Johnny, scribbling furiously. “At three o’clock?”

“At three o’clock, it said: ‘Three o’clock. The rainbow extends from three to four o’clock.’ At four o’clock: ‘Dig dig, dig, for the pot of gold.’ And five o’clock—”

“I know that one,” said Johnny. “And I don’t think the rest of it is necessary.”

“What’s it all about?” exclaimed Uncle Joe. “Sounds like someone’s buried a pot of gold somewhere!”

“Just a pot,” said Johnny. “Thanks, old man, next time I get through Columbus, I’ll throw you some business.” He hung up abruptly and looked up at Sam Cragg.

“What’d you get, Johnny?”

“A million bucks, maybe. Only someone’s ahead of us.”

“Huh?”

“Who knew about Uncle Joe, in Columbus?”

“Only Jim Partridge.”

“And Diana Rusk. And maybe… the murderer.”

“Jim Partridge could be the murderer, Johnny. I still figure him for it.”

“Tsk, tsk. The father of that charming young lady for whom you’re pining?”

“She doesn’t take after her old man.” Sam pointed at the sheet of paper that Johnny was folding and putting in his pocket. “What does that say?”

“What the Talking Clock said for three months when it was in Uncle Joe’s pawnshop. What it said to the Kid before he pawned it and which he was too dumb to understand. It tells where Simon Quisenberry stashed all his dough.”

“You’re crazy! Simon died broke. You know yourself that this business is in hock to the bank and that he even mortgaged his clock collection.”

“Yeah, I know that. But what’d he do with the money? He was laid up and he couldn’t spend it, could he?”

Sam gasped. “That’s right. But — but mightn’t he have sunk it into the business?”

“Two-three million in two years? Don’t be foolish. Add it up. Simon got a million from the bank on this business, a half million from the Greek for his clock collection. Then he mortgaged his place out in Hillcrest to the last dollar it would bring. That’s well over a million and a half, and if you ask me, he had plenty of dough besides that. You know he was nuts. He didn’t have a friend in the world. So what’d he do? He got together all the cash he could and buried it in a hole in the ground.

“He didn’t have much use for his son Eric, but he liked the grandson. The Kid was beginning to stack up like his grandfather. He was always in trouble in school. He got into scrapes — like I’ll bet old Simon got into himself. Well, Simon knew that Eric didn’t give a whoop and holler about clocks. They were just so many timepieces to him. He didn’t know about the grandson, but he was his only chance. So he fixed up the old Talking Clock, figuring if the Kid liked clocks even a little bit — and if he was smarter than his father — he’d tumble to what the clock said. If he didn’t — well, old Simon had no use for him either, and the money was just as good in a hole in the ground.”

Sam Cragg scowled. “Well, what’re we waiting for? Where’s this hole?”

“Where would it be but at Twelve O’Clock House? Why did Simon have the grounds laid out like a clock dial? The clock says: ‘The rainbow extends from three to four o’clock… Dig, dig, dig, for the pot of gold.’ Isn’t that clear enough?”

“Sure!” cried Sam. “The dough’s buried between those two walks — three and four o’clock.”

“Even Nick Bos could figure that out. And it’s sponges to doughnuts, Nick’s been spending his evenings out at— Shh!”

Eric Quisenberry pushed open the door and blinked when he saw Johnny in his chair.

“I made a telephone call, Mr. Quisenberry,” Johnny said, smiling pleasantly. “Do you mind?…”

“No, of course not,” Quisenberry said. “Well, I settled that business.”

“You called the cops?”

“No, I talked to the strikers. I told them exactly how I stood, that I only had six months to run this business and put it on a profitable basis. They seemed to like my talk and they’re coming back to work.”

“Say, that’s fine, Mr. Quisenberry!”

Quisenberry flushed with pleasure. “Perhaps, if my father had let me run this business before, it wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in now.”

Johnny drew a deep breath. “Mr. Quisenberry, did it ever occur to you that your father may not have been as hard up as he pretended?…”

“Eh? What do you mean? I saw the will, didn’t I? There wasn’t anything left. Even his clock collection was mortgaged, before he died… I admit it came as a shock, because I’d always been led to believe that this factory was making money.”

“Perhaps it is. Mightn’t your father have liquidated all his assets into cash and—”

“Cash? Well, where would it be?”

Johnny shrugged. “Concealed, perhaps?”

A slow gleam came into Eric Quisenberry’s eyes. “You know… there might just possibly be something to what you say. Bonita suggested it once, before Father died. That he was testing me, in some way, but then he did die and his attorney, Mr. Walsh, read the will and it was exactly as Father had told me beforehand.”

“Have you stopped to think, Mr. Quisenberry,” said Johnny, slowly, “that all this business of the Talking Clock might have something to do with that? For example, why should someone kill your son, Tom, away out there in Minnesota? Just to get the Talking Clock from him?”

“But they didn’t get it. I… why, you and your friend were suspected of that…”

“Right! But you’ll remember when you went up there to Minnesota they told you there were three men in the cell with Tom. Sam and myself and another man — a tramp we called Old-Timer. Well… we saw Old-Timer, right here in New York, not more than an hour ago.”

“What? Are you… sure?”

“Of course. He followed us… to a certain place. Then when he saw that we’d recognized him, he turned and ran like hell. We chased him, but he was too fast. He got away.”