The Case of the Buried Clock

Chapter 3

The cabin was more isolated than ever at night. The absolute silence out on the porch made one conscious of his ears, set up a vague ringing rhythm within the eardrums. The blazing stars seemed to hang just above the tops of the pine trees. Harley had the feeling that he could stand on the porch with a.22 rifle and shoot them down, as though they were lighted Christmas tree ornaments hanging from the dome of the sky.

The evening had turned chill, with that peculiar penetrating cold which comes at night in the high places, which gets into the blood and settles around the marrow of the bones.

Mr. Blane had left at once, and Harley laid a fire in the wood stove and lit it. The dry pine crackled into cheery flame. When the warmth touched him, Harley realized how cold he had really been, and began to shiver. He took blankets from the windowseat in the front room, and made up a bed on the spring cot on the front porch.

He had returned to the warmth of the fire, when a board on the porch creaked. Listening, he felt certain he heard the sound of cautious steps.

Harley slipped through the doorway into the kitchen, closing the connecting door to shut out the light, and stood with his face pressed against the window.

There was someone on the porch, someone who moved with catlike stealth, trying to peer through the side windows without being seen.

Harley tried in vain to recognize the figure. He closed his eyes for a few seconds to adjust them to the darkness. When he opened them again, the figure was still there peering in at the side window. Apparently the man had found a crack of visibility between the drapes, because Harley could see a very faint line of light across his face, a thread-like strip which looked as though it had been ruled with a luminous pencil.

When Harley was on the point of going out to challenge the intruder, he saw the figure move cautiously around to the front of the house.

“Halloooooo! Anybody home?”

The voice was almost instantly swallowed up in the unechoing silence.

Harley went at once to stand by the front door, but didn’t open it.

“Who is it?” he called.

“There’s been an accident.”

“Where?”

“Down the road a piece.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No, but I need your help.”

Harley flung open the door.

The man who stood facing him was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. He had a somewhat whimsical smile, but his eyes stared with disconcerting steadiness. The mouth was well formed, the hair black and tangled, pushed back and partially held in place by a broad-brimmed, battered felt hat. He was short — not over five feet three or four inches — and slender, but he carried himself with an air, and his motions indicated a hard, muscled body.

“I didn’t know anyone was living here,” he explained apologetically.

“I haven’t been here very long,” Harley admitted, and then added quickly, “You seem familiar with the property.”

The other laughed. “I’m a next-door neighbor — in a way of speaking. My cabin’s on down the road half a mile.”

Harley extended his hand, introduced himself. The other said, “I’m Burton Strague. I’m a writer of sorts. My sister and I have rented the Brigham cabin. We’re heating it with rejection slips.”

“I think I know the place,” Harley said. “Won’t you come in?”

“Thanks, but I’m looking for help. A car went off the road down here. I was going up to see if Rod Beaton would come along and give us a hand. Then I saw your light and wondered who was in here. The cabin hasn’t been tenanted for months... Belongs to a Vincent Blane, doesn’t it?”

“Yes...Who’s this other man you mentioned?”

“Rodney Beaton, the artist, naturalist and wild-life photographer. It was through him we came up here. I became acquainted with him by correspondence. He bought one of the cabins up here not very long ago... How about coming along and giving a hand with that car?”

“How far is it,” Harley asked, and then added quickly by way of explanation, “I’m convalescing.”

The other looked at him quickly, sudden respect in his eyes.

“Army?”

“Yes.”

“Gosh, how I wanted to go, but I’m T.B. All right, I guess, as long as I stay quiet, but — a man hates to stay quiet while there’s shooting going on... That accident’s about a quarter of a mile down the road. You hadn’t better tackle it if you’re not feeling fit. It’s getting a little crimpy outside.”

“A quarter of a mile,” Harley said. “That would put it right down—”

“Just beyond where this road joins the main highway. Fellow must have been going pretty fast and missed the curve. A two-tone blue job. I don’t think anyone’s under it, but we ought to make sure. We’ll have to get help to lift the car. That’s why I’m—”

“I’ll go,” Harley said, trying to keep expression from his face as he realized the description of the car was that of the one Jack Hardisty had been driving. “You don’t think the driver’s pinned under the car?”

“I doubt it,” Strague said. “Sis is staying down there so in case there are any sounds of life under the car she can tell the injured driver help is on the way. If you want to go down, I’ll run up to Beaton’s place and we’ll join you within a half hour.”

“All right,” Harley said, “I’ll start just as soon as I get on my coat and take a look at the fire.”

Harley went back to the kitchen and closed the dampers on the stove. He returned to the front room, turned off the gasoline lantern, belted his heavy overcoat about him and took the precaution of locking up. He slipped a flashlight in his pocket and started down the roadway.

As he descended into the little draw, it became measurably colder. Occasionally he used the beam of his flashlight to guide him through some shadowed twist in the road. Then, almost before he knew it, he was at the intersection with the main road... If a car had gone off, it must have been right at the turn, about ten yards below... A two-tone blue job. That certainly sounded like Jack Hardisty’s automobile.

Raymand switched on his flashlight, holding the beam down in the road, looking for tracks. He found, without difficulty, where the car had gone off. The tracks were plain, once you started looking for them, although he certainly hadn’t noticed them when Mr. Blane had driven him up to the cabin... In a way, he shouldn’t have left that cabin. And yet, if this should turn out to be Jack Hardisty’s car, and—

“Yoohoo,” a feminine voice called from the darkness down below the bank.

“Hello,” Harley called. “Are you Miss Strague?”

“Yes.”

He saw her, then, standing about halfway down a steep declivity, her shoulder resting against a tall pine. “You hadn’t better try coming straight down,” she warned. “You can go down the road about twenty or thirty yards and work your way down a little ridge. Even then you’ll have to be careful.”

Harley said, “Your brother and the man he went to get should show up soon. I’m from the Blane cabin up here... How far is the wreck from where you’re standing?”

“It’s directly below me, thirty or forty feet. I don’t think anyone’s in it.”

Harley walked down the road and found the sharp ridge the girl had mentioned. Even with the aid of his flashlight, it took him several minutes to get down to join Burton Strague’s sister.

She was tall and slender. He could tell that much about her, although he couldn’t see her features distinctly, much as he wanted to. Courtesy demanded he keep the beam of his flashlight from her eyes. Her voice sounded cultured, the voice of a young woman who is well poised and very certain of herself.

Harley Raymand introduced himself. He tried to avoid mentioning his military service, but he felt the searching gaze of her eyes. Then she said suddenly, “Oh yes, you’re from the Army. I should have known. You’re the man we read about in the Kenvale paper.”

Harley tried to detour the subject by moving over to where he could inspect the car. It was Jack Hardisty’s car beyond question. It was lying on its top, the wheels in the air, the body jammed down between huge boulders.

“I haven’t heard the faintest sound,” Lola Strague said. “If anyone’s in it, he must be dead... So you’re the Harley Raymand I’ve been reading about!”

There followed ten or fifteen minutes during which Harley found himself answering polite, adroit, but pointed, questions. Then they heard the sound of an automobile on the road above, the slamming of a car door. Someone stumbled, and a little rock rolled and clattered down the steep slope to plunge with a rattling escort of loose gravel to a final resting place in the canyon.

“Cease firing,” Lola Strague called with a laugh. “Did you bring an ax?”

Burt Strague’s voice sounded from above. “I brought an ax, a flashlight, and a rope from the house. I couldn’t get Rod. There’s a note on his door saying he’s gone to town for the evening. I waited five or ten minutes, hanging around the place, hoping he’d show up... Did Mr. Raymand find you?”

“I’m here,” Harley Raymand called.

“Well, I think the three of us can do the job. I’ll double the rope around a tree and slide down it. Look out, here I come. I — wait a minute, I think I hear a car coming.”

They listened, and could hear the sound of an automobile coming rapidly up the grade. Then, after a moment, they saw the reflections of headlights shining against the tops of trees, shifting from the bank on the left of the grade to the dark abyss of blackness which marked the canyon. A few moments later the headlights steadied, to send a stream of brilliant illumination flowing directly along the road above. The motor abruptly changed its tempo. There was the sound of brakes and then Burt Strague’s voice calling, “I wonder if you can give us a hand. There’s a car down here and—”

Masculine laughter boomed from above. There was the sound of a car door slamming, then a deep bass voice said, “Well, don’t be so damned formal about it.”

Lola Strague said, parenthetically, to Harley Raymand, “That’s Rod Beaton now. He must be coming back from town.”

A woman’s voice said, “Why, hello, Burt.”

“Hello, Myrna.”

Lola Strague added, “Myrna Payson,” and with sudden bitterness, “our local glamour girl.”

From the road above there drifted down low-voiced conversation, the boom of Rodney Beaton’s heavy laughter. Harley Raymand caught also the tinkle of Myrna Payson’s light laugh. Standing in the darkness, apparently forgotten by those above, Harley had an opportunity to appreciate the significance of what Lola Strague had said. Myrna Payson’s presence seemed to distract the attention of both men from the car at the bottom of the canyon and the people who waited there.

Lola Strague made no further comment, but in the rigid formality of her seething silence, Harley Raymand could feel her anger.

For what seemed almost two minutes, the little group up on the roadway chatted and laughed. Then Harley Raymand saw a broad-shouldered giant silhouetted against the illumination of the headlights. Rodney Beaton, standing on the edge of the embankment, looking down into the darkness called good-naturedly, “What have you got down there?”

“A wrecked car,” Lola Strague said crisply, and added nothing whatever to those three essential words.

At the tone of her voice, Rodney Beaton seemed suddenly anxious to make amends for his apparent neglect. He became instantly the energetic executive, assuming complete control.

“All right, Burt, you say you have a rope. Let’s double it around this tree. I’ll slide down it and you can follow. Then we’ll pull the rope down after us... You’d better stay here and watch the road, Myrna.”

Beaton’s voice was quietly authoritative. He somehow had the knack of getting things done. The scene almost instantly became efficiently active.

Rodney Beaton came down the rope first, sliding and slipping directly down the steep declivity, sending a shower of loose gravel rattling on ahead of him. Burt Strague followed, and Myrna Payson came to the edge of the roadway to stand outlined against the illumination reflected back from the car’s headlights.

Harley Raymand had a confused overlapping of impressions: the young woman standing up on the side of the roadway; the headlights faintly silhouetting her figure through her clothes, an attractive young woman who might not have been entirely unaware that the illumination was turning her skirt into a shadow gown — Burt Strague, slender, seeming somehow inefficient as he floundered and scrambled down the rope, his feet shooting out from under him on two or three occasions — Rodney Beaton, a good-natured giant, making every move count... Then Lola Strague was performing introductions and Harley’s hand was gripped by Rodney Beaton’s powerful fingers.

Harley saw that Beaton was some ten years older than Burt Strague. He was tall, powerful, loose-jointed, not fat, but thick. He had a smiling mouth, a firm jaw, and was wearing a western hat of the type generally referred to as a “five gallon.”

In the light reflected from the beam of the five-cell flashlight Rod Beaton was holding, Harley had a chance to get a better look at Lola Strague. She was blonde, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three, attired in a heavy checkered woolen shirt, open low at the throat, a plaid woolen jacket, trousers and laced boots. She gave the impression of being quite competently a part of the outdoors, of wearing clothes that were warm, strong, and made for service.

The beam of the flashlight darted down into the black canyon, licked over boulders and fallen trees, then came to rest on the overturned car.

Rod Beaton seemed thoroughly at home, thoroughly capable of handling a situation such as that. He said, “We won’t try any salvage work, just make sure there’s no one in the car and then quit... I think we can cut down the tree, Burt. If you’ll hold the flashlight, I’ll swing the ax. We’ll use it as a lever and raise the car so we can see the interior.”

Strague held the flashlight. Beaton swung the light ax with a smooth rhythm of powerful shoulders, the gleaming blade biting deep into the wood with every swing. It seemed to Harley that it took no more than four or five swinging blows to sever the tree neatly through. Then Beaton trimmed off the little limbs and the top, and had a pole some fifteen feet long and ten inches in diameter at the butt.

Calmly, competently, he assumed command, issuing quiet instructions, treating Harley Raymand with the same assurance he displayed toward Burt and Lola Strague.

“Now, Raymand, if you’ll get out on the far end of that pole. Just sit on it. Don’t try to use that bad elbow... Burt, you and Lola get on each side as near the end as you can. Let me guide this end of it... All right, now put a little pressure on it.”

They came down on the end of the pole. The car groaned and scraped, then raised up. Beaton blocked it with rocks, said, “All right. Take the pressure off the pole. Let me give you a new purchase... Okay, here we go again.”

Once more the car moved.

Beaton said, “We can see in it now,” and the beam of his spotlight showed windows that were cobwebbed with glass fractures and illuminated an empty interior.

“No one in here,” Beaton said. “Let’s take a look and see if he was thrown clear.”

The flashlight swung around in ever widening circles.

“No sign of him,” Beaton said.

Abruptly Harley asked, “Can you get a good look at the interior of that car, Beaton, and see if there’s a spade in there?”

At the sudden, complete silence which greeted his request, Harley realized how peculiar it sounded.

“You see,” he added, by way of explanation, “I think I know that car. If it’s the one I think it is, there should be a spade in back of the front seat.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look,” Beaton said. “You don’t know the license number?”

“No,” Raymand added somewhat lamely. “It was a car that was up at the cabin this afternoon.”

“I see... No, there doesn’t seem to be any spade in it.”

Lola Strague said, “Well, we’ve discharged our duties as Good Samaritans. I guess there’s nothing to do now except get back to the road.”

Rodney Beaton climbed up the steep slope as far as he could, then, coiling the rope, said to Myrna Payson, “Catch an end of this and loop it around that tree, will you, Myrna?”

With a heave of his powerful shoulders, Beaton sent the rope snaking up against the glow of the headlights, and as Myrna Payson caught the end and doubled it around the tree, she moved with a certain lithe grace, a deft co-ordination of arms and legs that accomplished her task and sent the loose end of the rope back down to Rodney Beaton in a surprisingly short time.

With the aid of the rope, they went up the steep incline to the road with relative ease.

Harley Raymand was left until last. He called up, “I’m afraid to trust this arm. I think I’d better—”

“Not at all,” Beaton interrupted heartily. “Just loop the rope around your waist and knot it with a bowline... Can you tie a bowline?”

“I think so,” Harley said.

“Wait a minute. I’ll tie one and toss it down to you.”

Beaton’s hands made two or three swift passes over the rope, then a loop came down to Raymand. He stepped inside it, raised it to his waist, took hold with his right hand, and leaning against the rope and using his legs, was pulled up the steep pitch.

At the top he was presented to Myrna Payson, who was, as Rodney Beaton gravely explained, a neighboring cattle rancher. One look at Myrna Payson’s wide-spaced, laughing eyes, her full, vivid-red lips, and Harley knew why Rodney Beaton and Burt Strague had been so preoccupied up there on the road. Her skin showed the result of care. Her clothes followed the lines of her figure with a well-fitting grace that to a woman would mean she “could wear anything.” Men would see only the effect As Harley studied her, Myrna Payson’s eyes in turn took him in from head to toe and made a careful and frankly personal appraisal of him.

In the quick burst of general conversation which followed the introduction, Harley gathered that the car, an old model coupe, belonged to Rodney Beaton; that, in the interest of “conserving rubber and gas,” he had “picked up his neighbor” in the early evening for a trip to town. Harley also gathered that Lola Strague definitely resented this... Then of a sudden, Harley felt too utterly wearied to remain interested in the affairs of this little group.

“I’m going to say good night, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I’ve had rather a trying day.”

“Oh, but let me drive you up to your cabin,” Burt Strague said quickly.

Harley didn’t look forward to the walk with any degree of pleasure, yet he said, “Oh that’s all right. I’d just as soon walk.”

“Nonsense,” Lola said firmly. “Burt will drive you up. Come on. Get in.”

Lola Strague jumped into the car in the middle of the front seat. Harley climbed in beside her, and Burt twisted himself in behind the steering wheel. Rodney Beaton seemed, for a moment, ill at ease. It was as though he had hoped to get Lola Strague off to one side for a word in private before leaving. But Myrna Payson called out, “Come on, Rod. We’ve got to get our car out of the way so they can turn around.”

Beaton still hesitated.

Burt Strague said, “The nearest telephone is at the ranger station three miles up that road, Rod. I’ll drive Raymand up to his cabin. You might go on up to the ranger station and notify the sheriff.”

After that it seemed a good five seconds before Beaton said, “I guess that’s the thing to do. Good night, everyone.”

No one tried to make conversation as Burt Strague piloted the car up to the cabin. And Harley was glad of it. He felt too tired even to talk.

They deposited him in front of the cabin. Burt said good night, and added something about hoping to see more of him and trusting the experience hadn’t been too much for him. Lola Strague gave him her hand, said, “Hope you’ll be all right, and we’ll be seeing you again.”

There was something of finality in her comments, but Burt waited for two or three seconds, then said, “Well, good night,” and turned the car.

Harley felt positive that Burt had been hoping for an invitation to come in.

Harley, climbing the three steps to the porch, realized that once more he was completely exhausted. He had intended to look for the buried clock, but felt able to do no more than crawl into the bed he had made out on the porch. He fell asleep almost instantly.

It was an hour before sunrise when he opened his eyes to find the air crisp with cold. He snuggled down into the warm blankets and amused himself by fastening his eyes upon one particular star, trying to keep it from receding to nothing in the growing light. But the star eluded him, vanished, and Harley couldn’t find it again. Smiling drowsily over his failure, he drifted off to sleep once more. The sun was warm on the porch when he finally awakened.

Harley knew as soon as he threw back the covers that he was feeling much stronger. The fresh mountain air had drained poisons from his system, and for the first time in weeks he actually wanted food — and lots of it.

He lit the oil stove, cooked coffee, eggs, bacon, toast and cereal — and then thought of the buried clock.

While the dishwater was heating, Harley went out to the porch, and then walked down the sloping, needle-carpeted grounds. He found the spot he wanted without difficulty and swept away the covering of pine needles.

The clock was ticking merrily away.

Harley compared it with his watch.

The clock was still exactly twenty-five minutes slow.

Harley replaced the box, carefully put the pine needles and moss back into place and returned to the cabin. The water was not yet hot enough for the dishes. There were no dishtowels in sight, but Harley remembered that linen was stored in a big cedar chest in the back bedroom. He opened the door of the bedroom, conscious of the fact that the chill of the night still clung to this room on the north side of the house. He was half-way to the cedar chest before he noticed that the bed was occupied.

For what must have been several seconds, Harley stood motionless with surprise, not knowing whether to withdraw quietly or to speak. Suppose Milicent or Adele had gone to the cabin, exhausted, had climbed into bed, knowing nothing of his subsequent arrival. Harley could sense complications.

The sleeper was facing the window, away from the door. The covers were pulled up in such a way that the head was completely concealed. Harley decided to get it over with.

“Good morning!”

The figure didn’t move.

Harley raised his voice, “I don’t want to intrude, but I’d like to know who you are.” The figure gave no sign of having heard.

Harley walked over to the bed, let his hand fall on the covers over the shoulder — and instantly knew something was radically wrong... He jerked with his right arm, pulling the motionless form toward him.

It was Jack Hardisty.

He had been dead for hours.