The Talking Clock

Chapter Twenty Three

Victorious, the two friends got to their feet. Johnny’s wrist was bleeding from the chafing of the steel caused by the fight. He said, “Now, how the devil can we get this off?”

“I might be able to break it.”

Johnny winced. “You’d break my wrist first. This isn’t one of your trick chains, with a soft-metal link.”

“I know, but Partridge didn’t leave the key. Unless we can find a hacksaw…”

“We haven’t got the time. It’s dark and Jim’s got a fifteen minute start on us. He’s rolling out to Hillcrest right now.”

Sam groaned. “What’d you have to tell him for?”

“What else could I do? The… the killer was already out there. He’d got the money and he wouldn’t have hung around afterwards to count it. Partridge was my only chance. He may get there in time to stop him. Come on…”

“Where to?”

“Hillcrest,” snapped Johnny, tugging at Sam’s wrist. “We’ve got to get out there.”

“How can we — with our hands like this?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll have to try it.”

Linked together, they descended the stairs to the first floor. They discovered that the front door was locked, but it held them less than thirty seconds. Sam kicked it down.

They burst upon the sidewalk and then Johnny exclaimed: “Their bus is still here!”

So it was; Partridge had evidently come up in his own car and gone off in it again. Johnny pushed Sam toward the car, “Get in. You’re on the left, you’ll have to drive.”

He twisted open the door with his free hand and shoved Sam toward the seat. Sam slid in and Johnny followed.

“The key’s gone!” Sam exclaimed.

Johnny groaned. “We’ve got to go up for it.”

They did. Mickey was regaining consciousness by that time and Sam tapped him on the head again. Charlie was still out and in his vest pocket, Johnny found the car key. Sam, kneeling beside him, utilized the time in gathering up some of the poker money that had been on the floor. Then they raced downstairs again.

A minute later, the motor roared into life. “I don’t know how this is going to work out, Johnny,” Sam said.

“It’ll work. It’s got to. I’ll watch with you and shift gears whenever it’s necessary. Head for the highway. We’ll risk a U turn here; it’s only a half block.”

They shifted into gear, made the U turn and scooted to the express highway, a half block away, driving the wrong way down the one-way street.

It was early evening and the space underneath the elevated highway was deserted, except for the few policemen who were stationed by the docks to guard the Normandie and the Queen Elizabeth.

At 57th Street they turned to the ramp and climbed up to the highway. It was straight driving then and the temptation to let out the car was strong, but they couldn’t risk it because of the numerous motorcycle policemen who patrolled the highway. To be stopped was to be lost. The handcuffs would be enough to have them taken immediately to the closest precinct house. They could explain there, yes, but it would be too late, then.

They kept the car down to forty-two miles an hour, up to the tool bridge crossing the Harlem River. During the moment’s pause they dropped their locked hands out of sight, while Sam reached out with his free left hand and paid the dime toll.

Once over the bridge, they increased their speed to forty-five miles an hour and when they reached Saw Mill River Parkway they went up to forty-eight, reasonably safe.

They merely held their own. They knew even as they drove at the controlled speed that Jim Partridge would be traveling as fast — with a twenty-minute start.

At Cross County Parkway they turned right, bounced over the construction work that was going on and then climbed the graded hill to Central Avenue. They left the parkway there and increased their speed on Central Avenue to fifty miles.

Ten minutes later they roared through the village of Hillcrest and began climbing the hill to Twelve O’Clock House. Halfway up, Johnny said:

“We’d better walk from here. Pull over to the curb.”

It was a tricky stop for the steep hill, but they managed it, by putting on the emergency brake and leaving the stalled motor in low gear. They scrambled out of the car and plunged up the hill, partly lighted by widely separated street lights.

At last, then, they stood at the gate of Twelve O’Clock House. It was wide open and ahead lights blazed in the house. On the veranda, too.

“Be damned!” muttered Johnny. “They seem to have a party going on up there.”

They walked up Six O’Clock Drive and as they approached Johnny recognized Eric Quisenberry on the veranda. With him were Ellen and Diana Rusk. And Nicholas Bos!

Johnny signaled Sam to stop a dozen feet from the veranda, out of range of the bright lights, so the handcuffs that bound them together would not be noticed by those on the veranda.

“Evening, folks,” he said. “Are we late for the party?”

“Ha!” cried Nicholas Bos. “You have dare come here? Is fine. You are man I have wanting to see. That clock you sell me…”

“The Talking Clock, Mr. Bos?”

Diana Rusk said quickly, “Mr. Bos insists I take back the clock. He claims… that it doesn’t talk.”

“Oh,” said Johnny. “Is that all? Shucks, for a dollar you can get a little phonograph record made tomorrow that’ll say anything he wants it to say.”

“No!” cried Nicholas Bos. “You are t’ief, Mr. Fletcher. The big scoundrel. You don’t telling me clock no good when you make me buy today…”

“I didn’t make you buy it, Bos,” Johnny said, curtly. “You’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for days trying to buy that clock. You offered up to seventy-five thousand for it. Miss Rusk took forty thousand…”

“It is not same clock, without talking,” protested Bos. “You knowing, too, you scoundrel!”

Johnny cleared his throat, noisily. “I wonder if you’d mind going into the house? I have a revelation to make. Something that will interest all of you, I’m sure.”

He shot a covert look to the right, down Three O’Clock Lane. Was that a moving shadow there by the shrubbery, near the fence?

“Why can’t you say what you’ve got to say right here?” asked Eric Quisenberry. “Since we’re all to hear it?…”

Sam Cragg suddenly nudged Johnny. “He’s down there!” he whispered hoarsely.

Johnny said loudly, “The light’s better in the house. I want to show—”

Down Three O’Clock Lane, a gun exploded. A man yelled and feet pounded on earth, on macadam, then grassy earth once more. Johnny leaped to the left, was almost knocked off his feet, as Sam failed to move with him, then tried again. The second time Sam ran with him.

The people on the veranda all sprang to their feet, began chattering. Johnny ran as he had never run before, and was sent stumbling once as Sam could not keep up with him.

Orange flame split the darkness and a gun roared again. To the left now. In full stride, Johnny wheeled and pulled Sam back the way they had come.

“He’ll be going around the house!” he panted. “We’ll head him off.”

He had a glimpse of frightened faces on the veranda as they tore past, then they were rushing down Nine O’Clock Walk. From the distance, behind the house, the gun banged a third time.

Halfway down Nine O’Clock, Johnny saw the shadow coming toward them. He jerked Sam to a halt and the big fellow lost his footing and pulled Johnny to the ground with him.

They scrambled about for a moment, came to their feet just as a running figure hurtled down upon them. Sam jerked his arm to the right… and the fleeing man crashed into their outstretched arms locked together with the handcuffs.

It was a violent impact. The whiplash of it brought Johnny and Sam together with a thud… but it locked the other man in the trap.

He was still fighting, though. He kicked and squirmed and even butted with his head. But at that sort of thing, in close quarters, no man could beat Sam Cragg, even though he had but one arm free. His fist went back and smashed forward, once, twice… and the man went limp.

Now, Jim Partridge came charging, gun in hand.

In the partial light from the veranda, he recognized Johnny Fletcher.

“You!…” he cried, in consternation.

Johnny, on hands and knees, lunged forward suddenly and clawed for Partridge’s ankle. He caught it, jerked, and Partridge crashed to the ground.

Sam reached forward, then, pulled on Partridge’s squirming body and quickly subdued it with a single blow of his fist, a terrible blow.

“Well, that’s that!” said Johnny. “You take Partridge.”

He twisted his hand into the collar of the roughly clad, unconscious man, and getting to his feet, pulled. Sam, meanwhile, caught an arm of the unconscious Jim Partridge.

Linked together, then, dragging a man apiece in their free arms, they went back to the lighted veranda. As they came in sight, Ellen Rusk popped out of the house. “I’ve called the police. They’re coming!…”

“No need, now,” said Johnny nonchalantly. “There won’t be any more trouble.”

“Mr. Partridge!” gasped Diana Rusk.

“Uh-huh, but he was only the cat’s paw for the other bozo… Mr. Quisenberry, this is the mysterious tramp I told you about. The one who killed your son up in Minnesota. We… called him Old-Timer!”

“But he’s just — a tramp!” cried Eric Quisenberry.

Johnny let the unconscious tramp fall on his back, so that light fell upon his face.

“Isn’t he? Can you wonder, now, why we paid no special attention to him in Minnesota? That make-up is as good as any I’ve ever seen…”

“Make-up?” exclaimed Diana Rusk.

“Sure,” said Johnny easily. “The whiskers are phony. The dirt is greasepaint…”

Far down the hill, a police siren screamed.

Johnny said, quickly: “Prepare yourself for a surprise. I was surprised myself when I found out this afternoon. I wouldn’t have been, though, if someone had told me that he’d been a track man in his college days.”

“Track… college?” exclaimed Quisenberry, bewildered. “That man?…”

“Uh-huh. I went up to his diggings today. He was packing. I saw a picture of himself in a track suit with the letter H on his shirt. Look…” He whipped a handkerchief from his pocket, stooped, and in two quick movements swept the ragged whiskers from the tramp’s face and swabbed it with the handkerchief.

“Wilbur Tamarack!”

The police car was coming up the hill now, its siren splitting the night with a hideous scream.

Johnny said: “Who was more in Simon Quisenberry’s confidence than the man he put in charge of his clock factory? And who was in a better position to know if the business was making money?”

The headlights of the police car turned into Six O’Clock Drive. Policemen piled out of the car, came running with guns.

Later, after Johnny Fletcher had found the handcuff key in Partridge’s pocket he continued his expose. “Tamarack was always traveling for the firm. He flew to Minnesota, beating you there by a full day, Miss Rusk. The disguise wasn’t difficult for him, because he’d been interested in theatricals in college. He knew that Tommy had pawned the clock because his private investigator — Jim Partridge — had traced it to Columbus. So Tamarack had himself arrested in Brooklands, but didn’t reveal himself to Tommy. He probably figured to pick the boy’s pockets while he slept. Something made Tom suspicious and he gave me the ticket. When Tamarack searched Tommy, Tommy either woke up and Tamarack had to strangle him, or he became enraged because he couldn’t find the ticket and — did it… He may even have seen Tom slip the ticket to me and killed him for that reason, but he didn’t quite dare tackle me — or Sam.

“He came back to New York. We obligingly retrieved the Talking Clock and you returned it here. In the meantime things became complicated. Bonita tried to sell the clock to Nick Bos, who having loaned Simon a lot of money on his collection, suspected that the old man was hoarding the money.

“Bonita may have wanted to steal the clock, but Joe Cornish beat her to it. Tamarack, by clever deduction, figured out who had stolen it, killed Cornish and got the clock himself. All he wanted of it was the talking-machine record which he took out of the clock. He then returned the clock to the house.

“During all this time, Jim Partridge, as slick a private detective as ever blackmailed a client, was doing a lot of nosing around. He’d got into the business originally through Wilbur Tamarack, who had employed him to locate Tommy Quisenberry… and the clock. Tamarack told him he was acting for Simon Quisenberry, the boy’s grandfather. But when he got back to New York and heard about the Talking Clock and the old man’s affairs, he put two and two together. Since Tamarack had hired him originally, the thing was easy enough for Partridge to figure out. He put the squeeze on Tamarack and the latter pretended to throw in with him…”

“That’s all right,” said Sam Cragg, “but when you called Columbus, Ohio, that pawnshop fellow — Uncle Joe — said someone had already telephoned to find out what the clock said. If Partridge didn’t know and Tamarack had the record himself, who was that?…”

Eric Quisenberry cleared his throat. “After all… I had some interest in that money.”

Johnny Fletcher looked at Ellen Rusk. She dropped her eyes. He grinned. “Well, there’s a legal question involved but I guess it’s all in the family anyway, so it doesn’t matter. You found the money, Mr. Quisenberry?”

Quisenberry hesitated a moment, then he nodded.

Merryman, the Hillcrest chief of police, returned. “My friend, Lieutenant Madigan, from New York is here. Uh… he wants to talk to you, Mr. Fletcher.”

Johnny winced. “Be right back, folks. Sam, come along.”

They went out of the house, where Lieutenant Madigan was waiting. He had a folded piece of paper in his hand. “Merryman told me what you did here, Johnny. Not bad, but — I’ve got to serve this paper anyway. Your hotel manager, Peabody…”

Johnny sighed, wearily. “So now I’ve got to figure out how to soft-soap Peabody. D’you suppose he’d listen to reason if I paid the bill?”

“He might. Have you got forty bucks?”

“No, but…” Johnny grinned. “Look, Lieutenant, we’re old pals, aren’t we?…”

Madigan backed away. “You’re not going to borrow that money from me!”

“Just until tomorrow. Miss Rusk will probably force a commission on me for selling her clock. But even if she doesn’t, I’ve got all this out of the way, and can get back to business and—”

“Yah!” said Sam Cragg, derisively.