Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

Old Simon Quisenberry was going to die. He was only four years past his allotted three score and ten, but he’d put too much strain on the old heart and two years ago, Dr. Wykagl had given him only six months more. He’d made a liar of the doctor by eighteen months.

It wouldn’t be nineteen months. Old Simon knew that and he sat in his wheel chair and listened to the ticking of the clocks as they tolled the moments that were left him. There were a thousand clocks and each told the same story. Each tick a second, sixty ticks a minute, a thousand ticks a thousand seconds… No, a thousand ticks were only one second.

Simon scowled at the clocks. They were confusing him. Damn the things. He’d put so much into them and now at the end, they were betraying him. They were ticking out his life — too fast.

There were a thousand clocks. They were of all shapes and sizes. Some were new, some old. Simon had gathered them from the corners of the earth, had delved into history to acquire some. A fifteenth century papal prince had owned one, another had been the prized possession of a Russian czar. The mistress of an archbishop had owned another and an eighteenth century pirate had gone to the gallows wearing one.

The clocks ticked, the grandfather clock in the corner, the tiny jeweled piece in the glass case, the burnished brass table model, from which a rooster crowed the hour, twenty-four times a day.

All the clocks ticked. All reminded Simon of the brief time he had left. His old blue eyes glared fiercely at the clocks and he dropped his withered hand on the bell that stood on the table beside his chair.

A servant came quietly into the room. Simon couldn’t remember his name. There had been so many servants, since Bonita had taken over the management of the house. They came and went so fast that Simon couldn’t even remember their faces. He scowled at the one he saw now.

“Stop the clocks,” he ordered.

The servant looked around the room. “You mean… all of them?”

“Of course, you fool!” Simon snapped. “I don’t want to hear another tick out of any of them. Stop them all.”

It was a herculean task that Simon ordered. The man had been employed to keep the clocks running. He wound those that needed winding, pulled the weights of those that operated by weights. He had been taught to keep the clocks running, but not to stop them.

Before he had clumsily stopped the third clock, Simon Quisenberry, purple from anger, wheeled himself out of the room. He summoned another servant.

“I want you to telephone the factory,” he instructed. “Tell my son to come out here and bring Nicholas Bos with him. Let me know when they arrive.”

Simon Quisenberry looked about the small circle of those interested in his affairs and was not pleased with what he saw.

He said to his son, Eric, “Maybe it’s my fault that you’re what you are, but if you’d had the stuff you’d have pinned my ears down — and I’d have liked it.”

Eric was forty-nine. He was well-built and wore tweeds when he wasn’t wearing riding breeches, boots and a broad-brimmed Stetson hat. Eric looked all heman. He only looked it. He flushed under his father’s sarcasm and shot an apprehensive glance at his wife, Bonita, who was regarding him with open contempt.

He said: “You’re not being fair, Father. You put me into the business and you never let me have any authority.”

“Of course I didn’t,” snapped Simon. “If you’d been man enough you’d have taken the authority. Well, I’ve got a surprise for you, Eric. I’m leaving you the business. It’s yours, all yours. All you’ve got to do is pay off one million dollars of indebtedness.”

Eric Quisenberry blinked. “A million…”

“One million dollars. That’s what the Quisenberry Clock Company owes the bank. You’ve got six months. If you can convince the bank, at the end of that time, that there’s a chance of paying them the million, they’ll give you the chance. If they don’t think so — they’ll take over and you’ll be reading the want ads, which might be a very good thing for you… Were you going to say something, Bonita?”

Bonita Quisenberry was Eric’s second wife. She admitted to thirty-five, looked forty and was actually forty-five. She was tawny and beautiful, if you like tigresses. She was about as subtle as a buzz saw. She said to her father-in-law, “I was going to ask you about the clocks. You know I’ve always been fascinated by them and I thought—”

Simon grunted. “Yes, you’ve thought. You’ve thought: ‘They’re driving me crazy. If it wasn’t for the senile old fool’s money I’d break every clock in the house.’ Isn’t that what you’ve thought, Bonita? You don’t have to answer. Because you’re not getting the clocks. My Greek friend, over there, gets them. Tell them why, Nick.”

Nicholas Bos was tall, thin and olive-skinned. He bowed. “Because I am only man appreciate the clock. I am collector of clock, myself. And—” he coughed, politely — “and I am already holding the mortgage on the clock. Is not so, my friend?”

“Yep,” agreed Simon Quisenberry. “One time when I was hard-pressed Nick plunked down a half million dollars, in return for which I gave him a mortgage on every clock in the house but one, he to foreclose said mortgage on the event of my death…”

“But that one clock, Mr. Quisenberry,” murmured the Greek. “She is most valuable clock of all. I will giving you fifty thousand dollar for her.”

“At which price it would be cheap, Nicholas. Still, it’s no sale. The Talking Clock I leave to my grandson, Tom Quisenberry, who—” the old man’s voice rasped in his throat — “who may develop into as big a thief and scoundrel as his grandfather. He has already shown striking evidence of that by stealing the Talking Clock.”

Simon looked fiercely from one to the other of those gathered about him. His eyes came to rest on Eric, his son. “All right, he stole the clock. But he had nerve enough to do it. And he had nerve enough to tell you, his father, to go jump in the Hudson River. The boy’s entitled to the clock. I only hope he knows how much it’s worth, because it’s the most valuable thing I’m leaving.” His nostril’s flared. “Still hoping, Eric? Well, don’t. The business is yours, for six months. This place is yours, for less than six months, since the bank will be pressing you soon. Yep, it’s mortgaged to the last nickel… Did you say something, Bonita?”

The natural color had receded from Bonita Quisenberry’s face so that the rouge showed up like irregular red islands. Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed. She said: “Damn you, you old buzzard!”

Simon laughed. It was a cackling, brittle laugh. “I would have been disappointed if you had held that in, Bonita.”

Bonita Quisenberry was the first to leave the house. She stood for a moment on the broad veranda, regarding the grounds with distaste. She had never liked Twelve O’Clock House from the moment she had come to it, four years ago.

The house itself was sumptuous enough for Bonita’s tastes; but Simon Quisenberry was mad on the subject of clocks. It wasn’t bad enough that he had the entire house full of crazy clocks, he had to extend the clock motif to the house and grounds.

The house was built on the summit of a steep hill and with it, as a hub, twelve macadamized paths fell away, with the symmetrical precision of a clock dial. The strip that indicated six o’clock was the automobile drive down to the main gate.

Bonita Quisenberry walked down this drive, a distance of a hundred yards. There was a stone cottage beside the gate and as she approached it, a swarthy, heavy-set man came out. He looked beyond Bonita toward the house, then said: