The Skeleton in the Clock

Chapter 12

We talk with scorn of prophetic instincts. Martin felt one then, as sharp as the twinge from a bad heart; but, like the mist-movings, it drifted away and was lost in an instant.

"Still alive?" he repeated, and laughed. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't be alive?"

"We-el!" smiled Masters, with a tolerant and amused wave of his hand. "As you described it to Sir Henry and me, this execution shed business was to be a swell affair. But you don't seem to be hanged by the neck or snuffed out by any ghost, do you?"

Martin, studying him, saw that Masters had the appearance of a man who has walked hard to keep just ahead of somebody. In addition to his reddish eyelids, there were certain familiar dust-stains on the blue serge which had not quite been erased by a handkerchief or the mist-damp.

"Chief Inspector," he said, "were you at that prison too?"

"We-el!" said Masters, as though he debated this himself. That's a very interesting question, sir. I might have been, and then again I might not have been." He drew closer, confidentially. The fact is, a minute ago I heard you two saying something about a skeleton and a clock."

"Please don't start to browbeat me," begged Jenny. "Go and see my grandmother."

"Browbeat? Now, miss!" Masters was reproachful. He grew more confidential, like a Balkan diplomat. "I'll just tell you something about that skeleton, if you like. It wasn't Sir George Fleet"

Jenny's eyes opened. "Who on earth ever said it was?"

"Still miss, one or two people seem to have got the idea." His eye swung towards Martin. "What about you, sir?"

"It did occur to me, yes. But not very seriously."

"Oh, ah. And that's right Yesterday evening at the police-station, we got a message from London. From a supply-firm that keeps records as far back as the Flood, it'ud seem. Dr. Pierre Laurier, the old one who's dead, bought the skeleton as an anatomical specimen in 1912.

"Also last night, before he went to join you on the (hurrum!) ghost-hunt, Sir Henry and I talked with ‘young' Dr. Hugh Laurier, who's forty-eight years old. Lives just outside the town-limits of Brayle."

This was after the Ben-Hur chariot-race, I gather?" Martin asked.

Masters frowned at him slightly, and addressed Jenny..

"Dr. Hugh, miss, told us all about it. When it became (hurrum!) — well, what you might call not fashionable to have skeletons hanging about in doctors' offices, his father put it away in a cupboard. It wasn't till shortly before his death in 1936, when he was old and maybe a bit fanciful, that this Pierre Laurier… was he French, miss?"

"Yes. His name was formerly De Laurier. That means," Jenny spoke wearily, "he was a nobleman, and Grandmother simply— Never mind. And the Fleets! He was supposed to have a hopeless passion for Aunt Cicely."

Masters made a broad wave of the hand.

"Anyway, miss, the old doctor with the beard took this skeleton, and put it in a clock after he'd taken the works out, and stuck it up in his back parlour as a kind of… kind of…"

"Memento mori" suggested Martin.

Masters considered this.

"Oh, ah. Just so. If that means what I think it does. Like the people who put up sun-dials with a motto, 'It is later than you think.'"

'It is later than you think.' Yes, Martin had heard that before. When Masters leaned towards Jenny, his head suddenly emerged out of a mist-wreath like a fatherly Spanish Inquisitor.

"Now come, miss!" he urged persuasively. "That's the living truth. And there's no harm in anything; I'll take my oath to it. Why does her ladyship, your good grandmother, want to cause a lot of unnecessary fuss and bother? Just why does she want the thing anyway? Eh?"

"If it comes to that" said Martin, instantly putting a guard between Jenny and Masters, "why do you want it yourself?"

"Ah! I'm afraid that'd be Official Secrets, sir."

"But there was nothing secret about why Lady Brayle wanted it: as a present for Dr. Hugh Laurier. She was bidding for it at Willaby's, until H.M. topped her. Afterwards he gave it to her. That's all."

"Is it, now?" Masters asked affably. "Then why did she take the skeleton alone? And not the clock?"

Too late Martin saw the flaw in his argument But Masters dismissed the matter.

"What I really wanted to say," he declared, this also being a lie, "was I've got lost in this ruddy mist. How can I get back to the Dragon?"

This is a landmark,’’ Jenny assured him, putting her hand on the fence. "Follow this, no matter how far it seems to go, and you'll come to the main road. Then turn right and follow the main road. You cant miss it"

"Well, now, miss, I'm much obliged!" Masters' fatherly heartiness was overpowering. "The fence, eh? Not a countryman myself." His look at Martin was almost a sardonic wink. "Good day to you!" He followed the line of the fence a few feet; then turned round.

"By the way, Mr. Drake. Have you got the time?" '

"It's getting on towards five."

"Ah!" Masters shook his head regretfully. "Pity! Bit too early to wake up Dr. Laurier. I wanted to know whether that blood on the dagger is human blood."

"What blood?" cried Jenny.

But Masters, at the deliberate walk he had never lost since he was a policeman on a beat, had disappeared into the mist Jenny's eyes asked Martin the same question.

"It's a joke," he growled. Like other things, he had forced the matter of that dagger out of his consciousness; shut the lid on it. "Just some horseplay at the prison. That fellow," he snarled, "was only trying to scare you when he didn't know a thing. Let's forget it"

They climbed the fence, navigated several ditches, and walked for some time in silence when his words seemed to ring with vibrations in Jenny's voice.

"You're quite right" she said. "Let's forget it! Today is— Sunday, isn't it? Let's forget it! Let's enjoy ourselves!"

"And tomorrow," said Martin, "you go to London with me. You must have some friends who aren't under the eye and grip of Grandma, and you can stay with them. We can get a special license soon, if you don't mind being married in a registry office. Will you do that?"

"Of course," Jenny said simply "Anywhere, any time. I did think it would be better to get Grandmother's approval, because she says she's beginning to like you; but—"

Martin stopped short

"Listen, Jenny angel." He touched her moist cheek, and looked down at the eager blue eyes. "It's a good thing I'm reasonably honest. Anybody you like seems able to deceive you. I can no more imagine your 'good grandmother’ giving us her approval than I can imagine her canoodling with Sir Henry Merrivale."

He felt a compression in the chest; such an immensity of tenderness that he could not have expressed it.

"It'll be all right, you know," he said. "You needn't worry. I’m not exactly broke, and… damn it, come on! We're nearly home!"

For the white, square solidness of Fleet House loomed up ahead in a mist-rift, seen partly from the north side and partly from the back. They were nearly on the edge of a flower garden, whose paths they managed with care, until they emerged across a clipped lawn at the back of the house. To Martin Drake, this morning, Fleet House had no forbidding quality at all.

"I suppose," Jenny said, in a voice which asked to have the supposition denied, "you'll want to sleep for hours and hours?"

"Sleep? Sleep!" He chortled from deep springs of happiness. "No, Jenny. What I want is a bath, a shave, and a change. But first I want quantities of very black, very strong tea."

"I'll make it for you."

Martin surveyed the back of the house. "But how do we get in?"

"Darling, nobody ever locks doors hereabouts. Anyone can walk in anywhere."

"But we'll wake the whole house up, won't we?"

"Wait; I've got it!" breathed Jenny. She pointed to a middle door hardly discernible through mist "I’ll go into the kitchen and make tea; Aunt Cicely won't mind. You go on up to the roof."

The roof?"

"It will be above the mist and clear air. We can do it without disturbing anybody, and we'll have the whole place to ourselves. I'll be up as soon as the kettle boils."

"That," declared Martin, "is one of the better ideas. But can't I help you?"

"Please let me do it myself," begged Jenny. Her look was irresistible… "If you knew how much I want to… to show … Please let me do it myself, and bring it up to you!"

"Yours to command, Jenny." It pleased him immensely. "Can I get up to the roof from here?"

Jenny indicated a small door at the north-west corner.

"The stairs," she said, "are enclosed. It's a kind of thin box. Do be careful, because they're nearly as steep as a carpeted ladder."

"I know, I’ve gone op there from another floor." He looked at the kitchen, and then at Jenny. 'Ten minutes?" "Less, if I can make it"

With even more acute exhilaration, Martin sauntered through mist-wreaths towards the door. It was set up well above ground-height on five concrete steps. The stairs, if he remembered correctly, were very narrow; they turned back the other way at each landing, which had a window and a door. Though half expecting to find the door bolted, he discovered it was open. He had shut himself into the cramped stair-well, whose dingy carpet showed holes and whose window-light filtered through mist, when another door at his right hand opened.

Framed in the doorway, against the dim-lit background of the dining-room, stood Dr. Hugh Laurier.

From his hard, white collar to his polished shoes, from the precision of the dark necktie to the pressing of the dark blue suit Dr. Laurier was so immaculately groomed that Martin felt like a tramp dragged out of an areaway. On Dr. Laurier there might never have been a speck of dust in his life.

"Capta — I beg your pardon: Mr. Drake."

His voice had the pleasant engaging professional level.

"Ordinarily," Dr. Laurier uttered a short laugh, "it would be hard to explain my presence at this hour. It would, indeed. But I was like the boy with the serial story. After going home, I returned here. I had to know what happened."

"You'll have to ask Stannard," replied Martin, feeling at his unshaven chin. "He'll be along in a moment.’'

"Mr. Stannard didn't come back with you?"

"No."

"Isn't that rather odd?"

"Nothing odd about it I didn't feel like having company, that's all."

Martin started to take a step up, but the doctor detained him.

"Mr. Drake. One other matter. I could not—" Dr. Laurier emphasized the words more than italics can convey—"speak of this in the presence of others. I want to say a word or two; then ask you not to remember it"

"Of course."

Dr. Laurier peered behind him. In the dining-room, the tall curtains of heavy red velvet were still drawn closely. The light of a single small bulb in a wall lamp touched his grey hair, his pince-nez. Martin remembered him silhouetted against a different radiance.^v

"Mr. Drake. My slip with the rapier was honestly an accident."

"But, man! I never thought it was anything else!" The other smiled whimsically.

"So many times," he said, "I have thrown myself under my opponent's guard. Or dropped sideways, on one knee, to cut with the double-edged blade!"

If this referred to the rules of fencing, it was weird talk. Dr. Laurier saw Martin's expression.

"In imagination," he explained dryly. "Are you well read in the history of small-arms?"

"I'm afraid not."

"There was the 'Fifty-fifty,' where you threw yourself in to catch his unedged blade in your left hand and kill him with the right. If your left hand in the least slipped, you were a dead man. There was the Spanish 'Low-High' with double-edgers: you parried a cut low to the right; you dropped on one knee to cut across the back of the knees above the ankles; then rose and thrust him through the side. There was the 'Vanity'; a very narrow mirror set into the blade along its length. Only a thread of it, unperceived till play began; but it blinded him with its flash.

"There was the botte de Jesuite, mentioned in Esmond. It really existed, and was a perfectly fair device of swordsmanship, unlike the others; they were outlawed. — But I bore you," Dr. Laurier added evenly.

"Not a bit. But some other time…"

"I speak," said the doctor, "of what interests me privately. It is the hobby of a lonely man. Do you understand?"

"I do."

"Nor am I a good swordsman as yet. Who can be, with so little opportunity to practice? My father fought two duels."

Martin, who had been about to get away as politely as possible, felt the tangle of ugly incidents catch him again like a net of hooks.

"By the way," he said. "Chief Inspector Masters wants to see you."

Dr. Laurier looked frankly puzzled,

"Chief… ah, yes! He and some other man came to my home last night before I joined you here. They asked some questions, completely mysterious to me, about a clock formerly owned by my father."

"That's not on his mind now. He wants to know," Martin cleared his throat "whether what we found on that dagger was human blood."

Dr. Laurier remained silent for a brief time.

"I regret to say," he answered, "that it was human blood.’’

Martin climbed the treacherous stairs. Would the lid bang on memory this time? Not quite, perhaps; but enough. Oh, to the devil with it anyway! In a very short time, any minute now, Jenny would be here. And he emerged on the roof.

Jenny was right The roof-top lay just a few feet above the mist. In every direction it swam and hovered, so that only a few tree-tops showed green like islands. Far over across the way, the front of the Dragon's Rest lay submerged well above its gable-windows, the three gables rising to steep peaks with plaster faces and window-curtains drawn close.

The sky was clear and warm; no sun, but the hint of a sun. Dead stillness here, and it seemed as lonely as Pentecost

As Martin took a few experimental steps to see how they sounded on concrete in this mist-world, the thought of Pentecost made him glance round.

Pentecost Prison — the observation occurred to him quite gravely — had not-moved. Though it was a very long distance away, he could see the mist lapping nearly to the top of its circular wall. He could pick out no details, and wished he could.

By the way, oughtn't Stannard to be showing up soon? As Dr. Laurier had asked, where was Stannard?

Martin made a complete circuit of the roof, studying the short chimneys and the plentitude of garden furniture. A flick of disquiet touched him when he thought of Stannard. But the man had distinctly said he was all right; he must have lost his way in the mist

Hold on! What's wrong with this roof-top?

Nothing wrong, exactly. Yet…

Martin was now standing towards the front but turning slowly round to study it eastwards. There stood the orange-and-chromium chairs, settees, and tables, vivid against brownish concrete and a pale sky. When he had come up to the roof yesterday evening to see H.M. and Masters, he had taken no particular account of the furniture. Yet it seemed to him now that it was now arranged — especially the folding beach-chairs — in a different pattern.

Nonsense! The furniture didn't get up, sportively, and rearrange itself overnight Such furniture, which suggested cocktail glasses and a portable gramophone, could hold no suggestion of the sinister. Then why was he having this damnable feeling of being watched?

Watched from where?

This was only reaction from last night. That exhilarated mood couldn't have lasted anyway. A number of people were peacefully sleeping underneath him.

"But I've seen the other kind of murderer too," he could remember Stannard saying, at a time which now seemed weeks instead of days ago. "That's why I don't scoff at spiritual evil."

Very well. Yet, whatever constitutes spiritual evil, it is confined to the dark and the unseen way. It has no strength, it is even ludicrous, in the calm early hours of a Sunday morning, on a commonplace roof-top where the furniture suggests a place for a party.

Martin strolled towards the northern side — careful of that ledge, now! — near the front Again he looked towards Pentecost Prison, wondering about Stannard. As he did so, two sentences went through his head.

"I regret to say that it is human blood."

And, recurring from another time, another he had remembered before:

"If you should hear the alarm-bell. In the night, it will mean we are in serious trouble."

He would like to see that alarm-bell. It would show the exact position of the condemned cell, where its rope hung. But, at such a distance, this was impossible. Idly he had noticed beside him a square table with a glassy-looking orange top. It might do for the tea-tray when Jenny arrived. On the table, he now suddenly observed, lay a pair of field-glasses.

Martin laughed aloud. This was like making a wish and having it answered by a flick of the lamp. They were very old glasses of antiquated pattern: the leather scuffed and peeling, the leather strap worn thin. But they might as a matter of curiosity, find the bell on top of the prison. He picked up the field-glasses.

"Jenny, where's that tea?" he called aloud.

Easy! Mustn't go bawling ‘where's that tea' when people are trying to sleep on a lethargic morning with all the windows open. He had said it only because again he felt that someone, with steady and shining eyes, was watching him. Never mind! He turned back to the field-glasses.

It is later than you think.

What made him hesitate, and inspect the glasses more closely, was not the motto on the sundial. It was an idea. He was not well posted on the facts of the Fleet case; H.M. and Masters had said little or nothing. But he did know, from two persons' accounts, that Sir George Fleet had come up to the roof with a pair of field-glasses.

Martin's first idea, characteristically, was a recollection of that grisly ghost-story by M. R. James, in which such glasses contain a fluid brewed from dead men's bones. Then, with a hot-and-cold sensation, he wondered if he might have solved the Fleet mystery while still knowing only a part of the facts.

You could, they said, play strange tricks with optical illusions.

As for the technical side — curse the technical side: he had no knowledge — that could only be guesswork.

"But suppose," Martin said aloud to the mist-world about him, "there's something wrong with the lenses that make distances wrong. He walks towards the front of the roof. He thinks he's farther from that six-inch parapet than he really is. He comes nearly to the edge, starts to take another step, stumbles as though he'd been pushed…"

It could be tried. Martin, facing towards Pentecost Prison and well back from the edge, lifted the field-glasses to his eyes. The lenses were polished, in focus for about a hundred yards, and very clear. Yet such is the power of suggestion, in such fashion can it poison, that he could not keep the glasses at his eyes for more than a brief look. He rattled them down on the glassy-looking table.

This infuriated him. Were those glasses left here, so very obviously, either to entrap or hoax him? Nonsense; it was all nerves.

Very deliberately, to show himself it was so, he turned round. He sauntered to the front of the roof at the middle, and stood just inside the little ledge. Deliberately he looked out over a countryside submerged in mist: left, right, and across to the gables of the Dragon's Rest

Then two things happened.

A distant sound — on its first tremor faint and creaky, but gathering volume, gathering voice — shook out with a creak-and-clang, creak-and-clang, metallic bell-notes banging across a hush of morning, clang-and-call, clang-and-call, so that Martin stood rigid with realization of what it was. The alarm-bell at Pentecost was ringing.

He did not turn round. He had not time to turn round.

A pair of human hands, just behind him, lunged out and gave him a violent shove in the middle of the back.

Martin had just that flash-hundredth of a second, with the bell-note in his ears, to understand he had been pitched forward — head foremost, but a little sideways — pitched forward over the ledge into a sea of mist After that he felt no pain; he felt nothing at all.