The Road To Ruin

17

MONROE HALL, STARTLED, looked up. “What was that?” However, since he was alone in the library at the moment, there was no one to answer. Still, he was certain there’d been a… a … a something.

A sound? Squinting at his signed first editions, his collection of nineteenth-century leather-bounds, his assortment of privately printed early twentieth-century erotica (under lock and key and glass), Hall felt a sudden unease. There had been a… a what?

An absence. Yes? Yes. Some sort of absence. Something—The dog that didn’t bark in the night. Yes, “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894. He had an excellent edition over there, very fine, no jacket or signature unfortunately, but still one of the more valuable bits of Sherlockiana.

What dog? There was no dog in this house, never had been, so if it did nothing that made perfect—

An absence of cuckoos.

That was it. Hall looked at his Rolex and it was nine past three, and yet no cuckoos had announced the hour, not one.

How long had this been going on, or not going on? Had he recently been only in other parts of the house, where he wouldn’t have heard the clocks anyway, and so been unaware that they were falling off, or down? Here in the library, where he liked to stand and look at his possessions, but never read them—reading is so bad for a book—he was right next to the clock room. If the cuckoos had been on the job, he’d have known it.

Wanting to know the worst, Hall left the library, went down the corridor, and entered the clock room, where every single clock on all the walls and standing on all the shelves was absolutely still. Not a sign of movement. They’d run down at various hours, some with their doors and birds’ mouths open, the rest shut down in mid-hour, like a medieval town under siege.

Hall was horrified. It was like looking at a massacre. “Hubert!” he cried, Hubert being an upstairs servant one of whose jobs was to keep these clocks wound. “Hubert?”

No answer. Hurrying to the wall phone, gleaming plastic among the dead wood, he pounded out Hubert’s extension, which would activate the man’s beeper no matter where on the grounds he might be. Then he hung up and waited, staring at the phone, because now it was Hubert’s job to call him back.

Nothing. Where was the man? Where was Hubert? Why was there nothing in the world but all these dead cuckoo clocks?

“Alicia!” he screamed, needing her, needing her now. “Alicia!”

He hurried back to the corridor, where his voice would carry farther. “Alicia!” She had to be here! Where was she, off with one of those damned automobiles? “Alicia!”

There was no one else, no one else in the world, who understood him and could give him solace at a time like this. With the rest of the world, no matter how awful things got, one had to go on pretending to be a grownup. Only with Alicia could he relax into the baby he was.

“Alicia!”

No answer. No answer. They all failed you, sooner or later. No one to rely on.

He couldn’t stand to look at the clocks any more, and he’d lost the spirit to go on gazing at his books. Pouting, lower lip stuck out, he trailed away down the corridor until he saw the open door of the gym, and went in there instead.

Ah, the gym. If only Flip Morriscone were here. Flip was a good fellow, one of the very few good fellows Hall had ever met. A good fellow, and an honest fellow, and a hardworking fellow, and the best thing of all, he liked Monroe Hall! If he were here now, he’d be supportive about the cuckoos, he’d know what to do next.

At loose ends—well, he was always at loose ends these days—Hall went over to the treadmill, set it at a very leisurely pace indeed, far more languid than Flip would ever allow, and went for a little walk.

A little walk to nowhere, that’s what his life had come down to. He could walk, he could walk all he wanted, but he couldn’t actually go anywhere.

Treadmill to Oblivion, 1954, Fred Allen’s grim-titled memoir of his life writing and starring in a weekly radio show. Hall had a copy of it, of course, signed first edition with a dust jacket in almost perfect condition. He’d been told it was a very good book.

He didn’t need to read those books. He didn’t need to exercise on all these intimidating machines. He didn’t need to drive all these cars. He needed to have them, that’s all, have everything, have the complete set of everything ever made. Then he’d be happy.

It was almost two hours later that Alicia, back from her drive, found him there, still ambling in place on the treadmill, humming a mournful little tune. “Why, Monroe,” she said.

“Oh, Alicia,” he said tragically. He stopped walking and bumped painfully into the front of the machine. “Damn! Drat! Oh, why can’t I—” He hopped off the treadmill, which ambled on without him. “This is so awful!” he cried.

Switching off the machine, Alicia said, “You’re all upset, Monroe. What’s happened?”

“The clocks,” he told her. “They’ve all stopped.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“I called for Hubert, but no answer. Where is he? He doesn’t have days off, does he?”

“Oh, Monroe,” Alicia said, “I’m afraid Hubert has left us.”

“Left us? Why would he do a thing like that?”

“His family talked against us,” she said. “They found him a different job, so he won’t have to associate with us.”

“With you?” Hall cried. “Everybody likes to associate with you!”

“Well, yes, dear,” she said. “I didn’t want to make too much of it, but yes, it was mostly you he was talking about. His family talking about.”

“So he’s just gone off, and left the cuckoos to die. What a cruel heartless thing to do.”

“I tell you what, Monroe,” she said, “why don’t we go in and wind them up again? The two of us?”

“We can’t wind all those clocks! Alicia, we need servants!”

“Well, I’m afraid we’re having fewer… and fewer.”

“You go wind cuckoos if you want,” Hall told her. “I’m going to call Cooper.”

“I don’t think Cooper can do much for us, Monroe.”

“He’s an employment agent,” Hall pointed out. “He’s supposed to find employees for people who need employees, and God knows that’s us. I’m going to call him now.”

Hall’s office was farther down the corridor. Entering it, he made straight for the mid-nineteenth-century partners desk with its green felt inserts on both sides. (He used both sides himself, of course.) Rolodexes were placed here and there, but he didn’t need them. He well knew Cooper’s number. He dialed it, gave his name to the receptionist, waited a very long time, and then the cheeky girl came back and said, “Mr. Cooper isn’t in at the moment. Woodja like to leave your name and number?”

“Mr. Cooper certainly is in,” Hall told her, “and he already knows my name and number. He’s ducking me. He’s avoiding me. You can give him a message for me.”

“Sure thing. Shoot.”

“Monroe Hall needs staff. Did you get that? Did you write that down?”

“Monroe Hall needs staff,” she repeated, deadpan.

“Tell him,” Hall said, and slammed the phone down. Somewhere, a cuckoo rang.