The Talking Clock

Chapter Twenty One

Quisenberry looked harassed and not too pleased to see them. “What’s this important information you have?”

“Why, it depends on whether you can answer a question. Mr. Quisenberry, you had the Talking Clock around the house for some time. Did you ever pay any attention to what it said?”

“No. I didn’t bother about any of the clocks. It was a damfool hobby of my father’s. He sunk a fortune into those clocks. They did all sorts of crazy things. Some played chimes, others had dogs chasing rabbits and on one of them a ballet of twelve dancers came out every hour and jumped about. I never thought of the Talking Clock any more or less than any of the other clocks.”

“That’s unfortunate, Mr. Quisenberry, because it seems that it was an important clock. But don’t you remember during the last couple of days — after you’d learned that the Talking Clock was valuable, and that you had no other visible assets — don’t you recall hearing the clock talk during this period?”

“Yes, of course. I must have heard it. But I paid no attention to what it said. I saw no reason to do so. Now, what is this important business you have? I’m up to my ears in work here. It wasn’t bad enough, but we had to get labor trouble.”

“I saw the pickets outside. Have all the men walked out?”

“No. Only a few so far. That’s Tamarack’s doings. I fired him…”

“Could Tamarack call a strike of the employees? I thought he was the manager here.”

“Sales manager!” Eric Quisenberry corrected, sharply. “He was a smooth-tongued handshaker. Always played up to my father. I never thought much of the man myself.”

Johnny nodded thoughtfully. “He’s rather fond of Diana Rusk, isn’t he?”

Eric Quisenberry’s nostrils flared. “I’ll soon put a stop to that. I mean…” His face crimsoned suddenly.

A man in shirt sleeves suddenly tore open the door and cried out: “Mr. Quisenberry, one of the strikers has thrown a brick through a window in the back.”

“What!” cried Quisenberry. “I’ll see about that. I’ll have the police here…” He rushed past Johnny and Sam.

Johnny looked at Sam, then he reached out and touching the door, swung it shut.

“Don’t you think we ought to go?” Sam asked, a bit nervously.

“What’s the hurry? I’d like a few words more with Quisenberry. He interests me. He’s changed into a regular wolf overnight. Funny what a woman can do to a man.”

He walked around Quisenberry’s desk and plumped himself down in the big, cushioned swivel chair. “Do I look like a business tycoon, Sam?”

His elbow brushed the telephone. “Let’s see, who can I call up long distance?”

He toyed with the phone and then a startled look came into his eyes. “Goddam it, why didn’t I think of that before? Of course…”

“What, Johnny?”

“Uncle Joe, in Columbus, Ohio! Remember when we went into his place and he brought out the Talking Clock? It was running and he remarked that he’d gotten so fond of the clock, he didn’t even care if it was redeemed or not? Why… he heard that clock talk, for months!…”

Sam Cragg whistled. “That’s right. Maybe he remembers…”

Johnny picked up the phone. Sam cried, hoarsely: “Hey, you can’t. Not long distance on his phone.”

“Why can’t I?… Operator, give me an outside wire. That’s right, Mr. Quisenberry wants me to make a call for him…”

A moment later. “I want long distance, please. Columbus, Ohio. A pawnshop on Front Street, that does business under the name of Uncle Joe. Yeah, Uncle Uncle Joe, ‘The Friend In Need.’ That’s right.”

The receiver to his ear, Johnny heard the long-distance connections being made, heard Columbus, Ohio, answer and then a pause, as the directory search was made. They broke the connection for a moment then, and when it was re-established the operator said:

“Here’s your party.”

“Hello,” said Johnny. “Is this Uncle Joe’s Pawn Shop?”

“It sure is,” was the reply. “This is Uncle Joe talking; what can I do for you?”

“This is the New York Police Department calling. We’re working on a matter involving an article that was held by your store in pawn for some months and recently redeemed. The article in question was a talking clock…”

“Oh,” said Uncle Joe. “I remember that. But I gave you the information only an hour ago…”

“You gave us the information?” Johnny cried. “What information?”

“Why you called up to ask what it was that the Talking Clock said. What’s the matter with your department?”

“Nothing,” said Johnny. “But, uh, it happens that you spoke to our Lieutenant Madigan. An unfortunate accident has happened to him… He’s been murdered.”

“Murdered! Good heavens! Because of the… the information I gave him?”

“That’s right. Now, we’ve got to start all over. You remember what it was you told the lieutenant — I mean, what the Talking Clock said?”

“Of course. I had that clock in my shop for almost three months. I liked it so much I kept it wound up and it would talk every hour. In three months I got to remember everything it said…”

“Hold it,” said Johnny. “I want to write it down.” He picked up a pencil and reached for a pad. “Now, go ahead. Begin with twelve o’clock. What did it say, then?”

“It said: ‘Twelve o’clock. Midnight and high noon. Watch the hours. Time and tide wait for no man.’

“At one o’clock: ‘Fortune awaits him who heeds the hours.’ At two o’clock: ‘The time approaches and Fortune is nigh.’ At three o’clock…”

“Go ahead,” said Johnny, scribbling furiously. “At three o’clock?”

“At three o’clock, it said: ‘Three o’clock. The rainbow extends from three to four o’clock.’ At four o’clock: ‘Dig dig, dig, for the pot of gold.’ And five o’clock—”

“I know that one,” said Johnny. “And I don’t think the rest of it is necessary.”

“What’s it all about?” exclaimed Uncle Joe. “Sounds like someone’s buried a pot of gold somewhere!”

“Just a pot,” said Johnny. “Thanks, old man, next time I get through Columbus, I’ll throw you some business.” He hung up abruptly and looked up at Sam Cragg.

“What’d you get, Johnny?”

“A million bucks, maybe. Only someone’s ahead of us.”

“Huh?”

“Who knew about Uncle Joe, in Columbus?”

“Only Jim Partridge.”

“And Diana Rusk. And maybe… the murderer.”

“Jim Partridge could be the murderer, Johnny. I still figure him for it.”

“Tsk, tsk. The father of that charming young lady for whom you’re pining?”

“She doesn’t take after her old man.” Sam pointed at the sheet of paper that Johnny was folding and putting in his pocket. “What does that say?”

“What the Talking Clock said for three months when it was in Uncle Joe’s pawnshop. What it said to the Kid before he pawned it and which he was too dumb to understand. It tells where Simon Quisenberry stashed all his dough.”

“You’re crazy! Simon died broke. You know yourself that this business is in hock to the bank and that he even mortgaged his clock collection.”

“Yeah, I know that. But what’d he do with the money? He was laid up and he couldn’t spend it, could he?”

Sam gasped. “That’s right. But — but mightn’t he have sunk it into the business?”

“Two-three million in two years? Don’t be foolish. Add it up. Simon got a million from the bank on this business, a half million from the Greek for his clock collection. Then he mortgaged his place out in Hillcrest to the last dollar it would bring. That’s well over a million and a half, and if you ask me, he had plenty of dough besides that. You know he was nuts. He didn’t have a friend in the world. So what’d he do? He got together all the cash he could and buried it in a hole in the ground.

“He didn’t have much use for his son Eric, but he liked the grandson. The Kid was beginning to stack up like his grandfather. He was always in trouble in school. He got into scrapes — like I’ll bet old Simon got into himself. Well, Simon knew that Eric didn’t give a whoop and holler about clocks. They were just so many timepieces to him. He didn’t know about the grandson, but he was his only chance. So he fixed up the old Talking Clock, figuring if the Kid liked clocks even a little bit — and if he was smarter than his father — he’d tumble to what the clock said. If he didn’t — well, old Simon had no use for him either, and the money was just as good in a hole in the ground.”

Sam Cragg scowled. “Well, what’re we waiting for? Where’s this hole?”

“Where would it be but at Twelve O’Clock House? Why did Simon have the grounds laid out like a clock dial? The clock says: ‘The rainbow extends from three to four o’clock… Dig, dig, dig, for the pot of gold.’ Isn’t that clear enough?”

“Sure!” cried Sam. “The dough’s buried between those two walks — three and four o’clock.”

“Even Nick Bos could figure that out. And it’s sponges to doughnuts, Nick’s been spending his evenings out at— Shh!”

Eric Quisenberry pushed open the door and blinked when he saw Johnny in his chair.

“I made a telephone call, Mr. Quisenberry,” Johnny said, smiling pleasantly. “Do you mind?…”

“No, of course not,” Quisenberry said. “Well, I settled that business.”

“You called the cops?”

“No, I talked to the strikers. I told them exactly how I stood, that I only had six months to run this business and put it on a profitable basis. They seemed to like my talk and they’re coming back to work.”

“Say, that’s fine, Mr. Quisenberry!”

Quisenberry flushed with pleasure. “Perhaps, if my father had let me run this business before, it wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in now.”

Johnny drew a deep breath. “Mr. Quisenberry, did it ever occur to you that your father may not have been as hard up as he pretended?…”

“Eh? What do you mean? I saw the will, didn’t I? There wasn’t anything left. Even his clock collection was mortgaged, before he died… I admit it came as a shock, because I’d always been led to believe that this factory was making money.”

“Perhaps it is. Mightn’t your father have liquidated all his assets into cash and—”

“Cash? Well, where would it be?”

Johnny shrugged. “Concealed, perhaps?”

A slow gleam came into Eric Quisenberry’s eyes. “You know… there might just possibly be something to what you say. Bonita suggested it once, before Father died. That he was testing me, in some way, but then he did die and his attorney, Mr. Walsh, read the will and it was exactly as Father had told me beforehand.”

“Have you stopped to think, Mr. Quisenberry,” said Johnny, slowly, “that all this business of the Talking Clock might have something to do with that? For example, why should someone kill your son, Tom, away out there in Minnesota? Just to get the Talking Clock from him?”

“But they didn’t get it. I… why, you and your friend were suspected of that…”

“Right! But you’ll remember when you went up there to Minnesota they told you there were three men in the cell with Tom. Sam and myself and another man — a tramp we called Old-Timer. Well… we saw Old-Timer, right here in New York, not more than an hour ago.”

“What? Are you… sure?”

“Of course. He followed us… to a certain place. Then when he saw that we’d recognized him, he turned and ran like hell. We chased him, but he was too fast. He got away.”

“A tramp!” exclaimed Eric Quisenberry. “They always claim it was a tramp who did it, when they’re trying to— No offense… I mean, I just never like those tramp stories.”

“This one’s true, Mr. Quisenberry. And I’ll tell you something else that’s true. It’s about the Talking Clock. Nicholas Bos paid Miss Rusk forty thousand dollars for it. I checked with a clock dealer on Lexington Avenue, a man very well posted. He said the Talking Clock is worth no more than five thousand dollars.”

Quisenberry stared. “But I heard Bos offer my father — before he died — fifty thousand dollars for the clock.”

“Then Bos knew that your father was hoarding money. He probably learned when he loaned him the money, with the collection as security.”

“That would have been just like Father. Trusting strangers before he did his family. When I think of what he did to me years ago…” Quisenberry’s mouth twisted, bitterly. “Well, never mind that. Perhaps Father did hide money somewhere. Where?…”

Johnny looked thoughtfully at Eric Quisenberry. “I’m not absolutely sure, but perhaps I can help you find it. That would necessitate spending some time at your home in Hillcrest. A night, preferably.”

“There’s plenty of room. Tonight?”

“Fine. We’ll be out there before dark. There’s something I want to check up on first.”

They left Quisenberry and the building. As they stepped to the sidewalk, Sam said: “I don’t get it yet, Johnny. If you’re not going to make a play for the dough yourself, why didn’t you tell Quisenberry where it’s stashed?”

“Because he’d be interested only in finding the money. I’m interested in nabbing the killer too. And I’ve got an overpowering hunch that he’ll show up out there tonight.”

Sam winced. “We’re going to be bait for a trap, Johnny. I don’t like it.”

Johnny gripped Sam’s arm. “That picket, Sam… Look!”

He was coming toward them, the sandwich sign flapping against his knees, but not quite concealing his ragged clothing.

“Old-Timer!” whispered Sam.

“Here’s where we get him…”

Johnny stepped away from Sam to flank the man carrying the picket sign. He said: “All right, Old-Timer!…”

And then Old-Timer brought his hand out from behind the sign. There was a huge .45 caliber automatic in it. “Pile into that car, you two!” he gritted, “or I’ll let you have it right here on the street.”

Johnny came up to his toes, but before launching himself forward, shot a quick glance at the black automobile that had drawn up beside him at the curb. The window of the car was lowered and from the aperture protruded the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. Over the gun was a snarling, vicious face.

Sam saw it too.

Johnny relaxed. “All right, you win, Old-Timer. Get in Sam…”

There were two men in the car, one behind the wheel and the other with the shotgun, in the rear seat. The driver swung open the door at his right. Sam climbed in and Johnny, reaching for the rear door, was gestured to the front. He got in beside Sam.

The motor of the car was already running and the driver shifted into gear and stepped on the accelerator. The car jerked away.

Behind Johnny and Sam, the man with the shotgun said: “This thing’s right behind your ears and there are two loads, one for each of you if you start any funny stuff.”

“We won’t,” Johnny promised. “But what about the other guy — isn’t he coming?”

“What I said before goes for questions,” retorted the man behind Johnny. “Shut your trap.”

The car whipped to the left up 47th Street, scooted to Eleventh Avenue, just catching the green light. It went to the short block to Twelfth Avenue and then turned south.

It rolled under the express highway for a few blocks, then turned again toward Eleventh Avenue. But it did not go all the way through. Halfway up the block, the car stopped before a run-down loft building.

“This is it,” said the man in the rear of the car. “Now wait until Charlie gets out and opens the door. Then you cross the sidewalk, quick. I’ll be watching for the funny stuff.”