CHAPTER XVI
Watch and Ward
I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded gardens and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe in mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in such surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a coal-cellar. And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an indefinite prospect of my prisoner's person at close quarters.
Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me some confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor his eyes at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn up to his chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I remember taking a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved remarkably in repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was higher and broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough now, but the closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of all. On the whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had been all the morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had fallen asleep in his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject enough; if not, I had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I was in no hurry to show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and took my seat by inches.
Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was.
His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit.
'I thought you were asleep?' I snapped, and knew better for certain before he spoke.
'You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended,' he explained.
'It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear.'
I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was.
'Do you?' I demanded.
'Rather!' he replied, with cheerful certitude. 'It's the clock, of course.'
'What clock?'
'The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road.'
'How do
'My good young man,' said Dan Levy, 'I know the face of that clock as well as I know the inside of this tower.'
'Then you do know where you are!' I cried, in such surprise that Levy grinned in a way that ill became a captive.
'Why,' said he, 'I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the neighhour'ood.'
'Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?' I demanded, but my warmth merely broadened his grin.
'Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are.'
'It won't in this case,' said I through my teeth. But for all my austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with quiet but most disquieting amusement.
'I'm not so sure of that,' he observed at length. 'It rather paid, to my way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to keep an eye on me.'
'Oh, did it!' said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon.
'I only mean,' he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, 'that you strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend.'
I said nothing to that.
'On the other 'and,' continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though he really was comparing us in his mind; 'on the other
I agreed, with more confidence than I felt.
'Yet I wonder he never thought of it,' my prisoner went on as if to himself.
'Thought of what?'
'Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!'
'How do you know he didn't?'
'Because this 'appens to be the day!'
And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's statement.
'That be blowed for a bluff!' was more or less what I said. 'It's too much of a coincidence to be anything else.'
'The odds are only six to one against it,' said Levy, indifferently. 'One of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you know your own business best.'
'At all events,' I boasted, 'I know better than to be bluffed by the most obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you.'
'I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run away from—though he looks as hard as nails—what there is of him,' said Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry some conviction. 'He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like.'
