The Case of the Buried Clock

Chapter 1

The coupe purred up the winding highway. Adele Blane’s dark eyes, usually so expressive, were now held in a hard focus of intense concentration as she guided the car around the curves. She was twenty-five, but, as her sister Milicent had once said, “Adele never looks her age. She either looks five years younger, or twenty years older.”

At her side, Harley Raymand held the door handle, so that swaying around the curves wouldn’t swing his weight over against his left elbow. The Army surgeons had managed to fix up the joint. “It’ll be stiff for a while,” they had told him, “and it’ll hurt. Try and work that stiffness out. Keep from jarring it as much as you can.”

A few hundred feet below the car, jumping from foam-flecked rocks to dark, cool pools, a mountain stream churned over boulders, laughed back the sunlight in sparkling reflections, filled the canyon with the sound of tumbling water.

The road crossed the mountain torrent on a suspension bridge, started a slanting climb up the other side of the canyon, mounted at length to a pine-clad plateau.

Off to the left, the Southern California sunlight turned the towering granite mountains into a dazzling brilliance which made the shadows below seem as blotches of ink. The road wound along a plateau region where pine trees oozed scent into the warm dry air. Far off to the right, the heat-haze which enveloped the lowlands looked like molten brass whipped up to a creamy consistency and poured into the valley.

“Tired?” Harley Raymand asked Adele.

“No — a little worried, that’s all.”

She negotiated a sharp turn, concentrating on the road. Then, on a brief straightaway, flashed him a glance. “I’ll bet you’re tired,” she said suddenly. “Almost your first day home, and I drag you up here to Dad’s cabin... And you had your talk at the luncheon club, too.”

Harley said quietly, “No, I’m not tired... I’d just forgotten there were places like this, and now I’m getting reacquainted with them.”

“Didn’t your talk at the luncheon club tire you?”

“Not me,” he laughed, “only the audience.”

“Harley, you know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I guess they expected the usual flag-waving. I didn’t give it to them. I told them this time war was a business — and they’d have to work at it just as they worked at their businesses, without fanfare and bands and hullabaloo. And I told them we’d get licked if we didn’t work at it.”

Adele Blane said suddenly, “Harley, are you going to work for Father?”

“He telephoned me to drop in and see him when I had a little time and knew what I wanted to do.”

“He needs someone like you, someone he can trust... not like— Oh well.”

“Jack Hardisty, eh? Didn’t that turn out all right, Adele?”

“Let’s not talk about it,” she said shortly. Then, apologizing for her shortness, “No, it definitely didn’t turn out all right, but I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Okay.”

She flashed him a quick glance. The indifference in his voice was new to her. In many ways this man was a stranger. A year ago she had known his every mood. Now he could surprise her. It was as though the Kenvale world were being viewed in his mind through the wrong end of a telescope, as though things which loomed important in her mind seemed merely trivial in his.

The road entered another steep canyon, climbing sharply. At the summit of this grade Adele turned sharply to the left, ran up a grade to a plateau where the cabin, nestling at the apex of a triangular slope, looked as though it had grown there as naturally as the pine trees.

It was one story, with a wide porch running across the front and one side. The rail of the porch and the pillars were of small logs from which the bark had been removed. The outside was of shakes, and the weather had aged them until the cabin blended into the green of the background and the brown pine needles of the foreground.

“Look natural?” she asked him.

He nodded.

For a moment she thought he was bored, then she caught sight of his eyes.

“I’ve thought about this place a lot,” he said. “It represents something that’s hard to find these days — tranquillity... How long will we be up here?”

“Not long.”

“Can I help?”

“No, it’s just a checking up, looking over the canned goods, seeing what needs to be done. You stay out in the sunshine and rest.”

She watched him get out of the car, saving his left elbow. “You know your way around,” she said. “There’ll be some cold water in the spring.”

She hurried on into the cabin, opening windows, airing the place out. Harley walked around the trail to the deep shadows where crystal-clear, cold water trickled out of the spring. He used the graniteware cup to take a deep drink, then strolled out to a patch of sunlight beside a flat rock. His view took in the long slope across the deep canyon, now beginning to fill with purple shadows. There wasn’t enough wind to start the faintest murmur in the tops of the pines. The sky was cloudless blue. The mountains rolled in undulating pastels except where jagged crags ripped their way into glittering pinnacles.

Harley propped his head back against a pine-needle cushion, half closed his eyes, experiencing that sudden fatigue which comes to men whose reserve strength has been sapped by wounds. He felt as though the effort of moving even an arm would require a superhuman expenditure of energy.

“Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.”

Harley opened his eyes. A fleeting expression of annoyance crossed his face. He wanted so much to have utter silence, for just a few moments...

“Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.”

Surely his watch couldn’t be making that much noise. The thing seemed to be coming from the ground right by his ear.

He shifted his position and folded his coat into a pillow. The sound of the ticking was no longer audible. He was lying flat now, looking up at the lacework of pine branches traced against the blue sky. He was completely, utterly weary, wanting only to lie there, as though he were a pine needle which had drifted down to the ground to soak up oblivion.

He wakened with a start, opened his eyes, caught the lines of a shapely ankle and leg, the hem of a sport skirt.

Adele Blane, sitting on the rock beside him, smiled down at him with that tenderness which women have for men who are recuperating from wounds received in combat. “Feel better?”

“Heavens, yes. What time is it?”

“Around four.”

“Gosh, I must have been asleep for a couple of hours.”

“Not much over an hour, I guess. Did you go to sleep right after I left you?”

“Yes. I–I felt as though someone had pulled a plug in my feet and let all my vitality run out.”

They both laughed. “And you’re feeling better now?”

“Like a million dollars! That nap brought back my strength... Ready to start back?”

“Uh huh, if you are.”

He raised himself to a sitting position, shook out the coat, asked, “What’s the clockwork mechanism for, Adele?”

“What clockwork mechanism?”

“I don’t know. It probably regulates something. You can hear it over at the corner of the rock. That’s why I moved.”

He caught the significance of her glance and laughed outright. “Do you really think I have spells of delirium?”

She joined his laughter at once, but her laughter lacked spontaneity.

Slightly irritated, Harley said, “You can hear it for yourself, over at that corner of the rock.”

She bent down, more as a courtesy than out of curiosity, quite evidently expecting to hear nothing.

He was watching her face when her detachment gave way to a sudden flare of puzzled bewilderment.

“That’s what I meant,” Harley said with dignity.

“It sounds — Harley, it sounds like a clock! It is a clock! It’s right here!”

He scooped away the pine needles, clearing a small section of earth, and disclosed the lid of a lacquered tin box which had been buried with great care in the soil. He raised the lid.

Within the box, held securely upright by wooden blocks, a small-sized alarm clock was ticking steadily. It was, Harley saw, a clock made by one of the best-known manufacturers. Aside from the peculiar bracing, there seemed to be nothing unusual in its appearance. There were two small holes in the lacquered box.

Harley consulted his watch. “It’s exactly twenty-five minutes slow. You wouldn’t think it would be that far off. It’s a good grade of clock. Notice this lid. It’s almost flush with the ground. Just a few pine needles and a little moss have been placed over it.”

“What a strange way to bury a clock!” Adele exclaimed.

Raymand laughed. “I don’t know just what is the standard of normal in clock-burying. Personally, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a buried clock. Are we—”

The sound of an automobile engine reached their ears, the motor of a car that was climbing rapidly.

Harley listened, said, “Sounds to me as though they’re taking the road up here. Let’s just drop the clock back into the box, put the pine needles over it, and stroll up toward the cabin. Perhaps whoever is coming in that car will—”

“Go ahead,” she said. “You’ll have to hurry.”

Harley dropped the lid back on the box, deftly replaced the pine needles and little fragments of moss. “All ready,” he said, taking Adele’s arm.

Momentarily a clump of brush masked them as a car swung around the curve in the roadway to emerge on the little plateau. For a moment it was merely an indistinct object moving through the afternoon shadows cast by the trees. Then, as it debouched into a sun-flecked opening, it resolved itself into a two-tone blue coupe.

“It’s Jack Hardisty’s car!” Adele exclaimed.

Abruptly the car came to a stop. The door opened. Jack Hardisty scrambled out to the needle-carpeted clearing.

Adele Blane’s hand rested on Harley’s arm as he started to move out from behind the brush. “Don’t! Wait here, please!”

They stood motionless, watching Hardisty reach into the interior of the car, pull out a long-bladed garden spade, and start toward the outcropping of rock. Then he stopped abruptly as he saw the indistinct figures behind the brush.

For a moment the pair were gripped in that rigid immobility that comes with discovery. Then they broke into the stiff action pattern of those who are trying consciously to act naturally — and making a dismal failure of it.

“Walk out from behind the brush as though we hadn’t seen him,” Adele coached in a low voice.

Harley Raymand felt the pressure of her hand on his arm. They moved awkwardly from behind the brush into the patch of afternoon sunlight. From the corner of his eye, Harley saw Jack Hardisty hastily push the spade back into the car. Adele, now in plain sight, registered a surprise which, to Harley’s self-conscious embarrassment, seemed as obvious as the overdone pantomime acting of the silent screen.

“Why, there’s a car — it’s Jack!”

She had raised her voice so it would carry, and her attempt at surprise left Harley with no alternative save to follow suit.

Hardisty came walking toward them.

He was narrow across the shoulders, pinched in the face, but his double-breasted gray suit had the unwrinkled neatness which is found only in the clothes worn by thin men whose pores exude a minimum of body moisture. His nose was prominent, high-bridged, and supported bowless glasses.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed. “It’s our hero returned from the wars! How are you, Harley? Hello, Adele.”

The hearty, man-to-man enthusiasm of Jack Hardisty was overdone. He hadn’t the capacity of lusty emotions, and his attempt to put punch into his greeting was so synthetic it carried its own stigma of insincerity.

Harley Raymand couldn’t bring himself to respond to Hardisty’s vociferous cordiality. Adele Blane held herself aloof, and the first rush of sentences stagnated into a slow-flowing trickle of conversation.

“Well,” Hardisty said, “I want to get on up to the cabin. Lost my favorite knife when I was up here a week ago... Thought I might have left it out around the grounds, or perhaps it dropped down behind the cushions in that big chair.”

“A week ago,” Adele said musingly. “Why, I didn’t think anyone had been up here for ages. The cabin didn’t look as though it had even been opened.”

“Oh, I didn’t straighten it up any, just ran up for a few hours’ rest... Like to get away from the noises and the blare of radios. It’s peaceful up here, helps you reach a decision when—”

He became abruptly silent.

Adele said with dignity, “We were just leaving. I was looking the place over. Dad is coming up tomorrow night. Are you ready, Harley?”

He nodded.

“Hope you find your knife,” Harley said politely, as they started toward the place where Adele had left her car.

Hardisty became instantly effusive. “Thanks, old man! Thanks a lot! Hope that arm doesn’t give you any trouble. Take care of yourself. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Take it easy, boy. Take it easy.”

It was not until after they had reached the foot of the grade and were on the straight stretch leading to Kenvale, that Adele suddenly gave vent to her feelings. “I hate him,” she said.

“He’d do a lot better if he acted naturally,” Harley agreed. “Someone’s sold him on the idea of impressing people with his personality. He just hasn’t that kind of a personality. It’s as though a dummy tried to do a strip tease.”

“It isn’t that,” she said. “I can stand that stuff, because I think he has an inferiority complex; but it’s what he’s done to Father.”

Harley started to ask a question then thought better of it.

Adele said, “He’s short over ten thousand dollars at his bank. You know as well as I do, it was Dad’s money and Dad’s influence that got him in over there.”

“I’m afraid I’m a little out of touch with things,” Harley apologized.

“Dad started a bank in Roxbury, made a six-thousand-dollar-a-year job for Jack — just because he was Milicent’s husband.”

Harley remained silent.

“Jack Hardisty,” Adele went on, “has been reading books on salesmanship and on influencing people. He hides his half-starved, whimpering soul behind the mask of a big, bluff, backslapping paragon of pep... It’s all I can do to keep my hands off of him.”

“The shortage known?” Harley asked.

“Only the bank directors and the bonding company. Dad had guaranteed the bonding company against loss on Jack’s policy. They didn’t want to write it — something in Jack’s past. I suppose Dad’s got to make it good and hush it up and — I shouldn’t have shot off steam about this, Harley. Forget it, will you?”

Harley smiled at her. “It’s forgotten.”

She realized that a year ago this would have absorbed his thoughts and dominated their conversation. Now he apparently dismissed it from his mind as a minor matter. She said, “That’s why Dad needs someone he can trust.”

He might not have heard her, or hearing, might not have realized the implications to himself. He merely asked, “Why did Jack bury that clock up at the cabin?”

“Do you think he did?”

“He certainly was starting over toward that granite outcropping, and he’d taken a shovel from the car.”

She said, “I’ve been trying to think that out. I can’t understand it. I — why, here comes Milicent’s car! She—”

Adele broke off talking, to wave frantically at an approaching light convertible. The car slowed to a stop. Milicent Blane’s eyes regarded them from behind neat-fitting, rimless spectacles. Impatient with the life of idleness which was open to her as the daughter of Vincent Blane, she had studied to become a registered nurse. Her marriage had interrupted her career, filling her at first with a radiant happiness which had withered almost as it bloomed. Her face, never very expressive, had become a mask of grave immobility.

“Hello! Been up to the cabin? Why, hello, Harley! I didn’t recognize you for a minute! Well, how are you?”

Harley Raymand opened the door of Adele’s car, walked around to shake hands with Milicent.

“It certainly is good to see you. They told us you were pretty well shot up... Are you feeling all right now?”

“Tough as taxes. I’m glad to see you again.”

She turned to Adele. “Been up to the cabin?”

Adele nodded.

“Did you — I mean — was...?”

“Yes,” Adele interrupted, reading her thoughts. “He came up just as we were leaving.”

Milicent’s attempt to be courteous, to show a polite interest in Harley’s return yet get started for the cabin without so much as a minute’s delay, made her rather confused.

“Well, it’s nice to have seen you,” she said, slipping the car into gear and holding out the clutch. “I hope we’ll be seeing you. Hope you see us — I mean I hope you’ll — oh, we’ll get together.”

Her foot slid back. The car lurched ahead.

Adele watched her dubiously for a few moments, then started on toward Kenvale. “The rat,” she muttered savagely under her breath, “isn’t good enough to be her doormat.”

“She knows about what’s happened?”

“I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.”

“Then why was she in such a dither to locate her husband?” Harley asked.

“Because there are — domestic troubles, too. Let’s not talk about Jack... Where are you staying, Harley?”

“At the hotel.”

Adele’s foot pushed down on the throttle. After the tire-conserving pace at which she had been operating the car, the new speed seemed terrific, although the speedometer showed it as only fifty-five miles an hour.

She laughed apologetically. “I just thought of an appointment I had. I’m going to be late... That’s the trouble with you, Harley: you make me forget things. And here it is almost sunset.”