The Skeleton in the Clock

except for Martin Drake, it was now empty. Martin stood by the stove, his dark eyebrows drawn together and the green eyes enraged. H.M., after giving him a dismal look, lumbered over to peer out of the open door into the road.

Some distance to the left along the Dragon's Rest Jenny was detaching a bicycle from the ivy and steadfastly refusing to look round. A light-haired young man in a sports-coat had just opened the central gate in the wall round Fleet House. Sauntering, her head high, a girl in a grey silk frock walked in the same direction. Though there was no visible sign of Dr. Laurier, you could hear a car-motor start up close at hand.

It had been a swift, decisive exodus. The emotional echoes still swung like bells inside your head. H.M., the corners of his mouth turned down, turned and surveyed Martin.

'You been havin' a good time?' he demanded.

'Listen, sir,' Martin began. He paused for a few seconds, and tried again more calmly. 'Yesterday, before Jenny and I left Willaby's, we told you pretty well everything.'

'You did, son. Well?'

'But you didn't hear about the execution shed. You didn't hear—' Again Martin stopped. 'Women!' he added, with one savage and sweeping gesture.

Then, shouting something, he also plunged out through the open door.

Chapter 7

Martin had slowed his run to a walk before he reached the central gate of Fleet House.

Well to the north and well to the south in the low stone wall there was a wide iron gate through which a gravelled carriage-drive curved up to the front terrace and returned to the road again like the arc of a bow. In the middle of the wall there was a smaller central gate; from it a narrower path, between lines of trees, ran straight up to the terrace like an arrow to the bow.

Martin, his footsteps rasping on gravel, overtook Ruth Callice just as she reached the terrace. Ricky had already hurried inside to see his mother. This terrace was only a broad stretch of flagstones, with four shallow flagstoned steps leading up to it Ruth hesitated at the top, and turned round at his call.

'Ruth!'

'Yes?'

He stood at the foot of the steps, looking up at her. Her softly rounded face had that clear-flesh tint he associated with youth and health. The dark-brown eyes were inquiring.

'Martin,' she smiled, 'you needn't apologize.' Her expression grew whimsical. 'I've been yelled at so often in my business career, especially by men, that I hardly notice it'

'I haven’t come to apologize, Ruth. For the first time since I’ve known you, I think you ought to be put over a convenient knee and walloped.'

Ruth's colour receded to pallor, and slowly returned,

'I won't quarrel with you, Martin.'

'As a second point of fact, I didn't yell at you.'

'You were fairly audible, dear. And please remember only what I said. I merely reminded you of your promise. Whereupon you and Jenny and Dr. Laurier began arguing as to whether or not it was a good thing to go ghost-hunting. All I said in the whole discussion was: would you come and see John Stannard before you decided. Then you yelled at me.'

That's why I'm here. To see Stannard.'

He ran up the four steps and faced her. Round and above him stretched that white, and still cold, face of Fleet House. Four smallish Corinthian pillars were set flush into the facade, two on each side of the broad front door. Except for a small close-in balcony on each of the windows above, these were the only ornamentation. Eight windows on the ground floor, eight windows on the floor above, eight smaller windows on a smaller floor above.

Very high ceilings in the rooms, too. High, breathing cold like a prison! This Martin noted somewhere at the back of his mind as he ran up the steps.

'Jenny…' he began.

Ruth laughed. 'Jenny thinks I've been your mistress for years and years. Isn't it exquisitely silly?' '

'Not if she thinks so. Look here: if you knew who 'Jenny’ was for all this time, why didn't you tell me?'

'Perhaps I had my reasons.' A pause. 'Perhaps I still have them.' Another pause. 'Perhaps I’ll tell you tonight'

'Oh, no, you won't I—'

'Aren't you forgetting something?' Ruth asked sharply. 'Forgetting what?'

That I was the one who arranged for us to stay here? That I was the one who deliberately arranged to throw you and Jenny together?'

This, it occurred to him, was true. It checked him in mid-flight while Ruth smiled.

'Oh, Martin!' Her tone softened. 'We've been such good —’’ the trailing of the voice implied 'friends.' She put out her hand, and he took it 'Now let's go in and see John Stannasd!'

'Where is he?'

Ruth nodded to wards the second two of the four windows to the left of the front door.

'In the library. Cicely, I'm sorry to say, hasn’t been very well You may not meet her yet',

'Tell me, Ruth. Do you know anything about what happened here nearly twenty years ago?'

'Yes. Almost everything.'

With a common impulse they glanced over their shoulders. In the middle of the gravel path, down towards the gate, stood Sir Henry Merrivale. But he did not see them. H.M.'s fists were on his hips, his big bald head raised; and he was glaring with malignancy at something which appeared to be just over their heads.

Martin, looking up, could see mi thing except the white-painted iron frame, crossing near the tops of the Corinthian columns, and folding flat a large old-fashioned awning, coloured orange. It could be let down to shade a long space before the front door. Then Ruth hurried him into the cool, sot to say chilly, front hall. But her hand suddenly fell on his arm, warning him to say nothing as they saw what was ahead.

Fleet House had been built in the very early nineteenth century, in that pseudo-Greek classicism which began with the French Revolution and was continued by Bonaparte. The wide, dim hall had at its far end an arched window. A staircase had been built against that wall, sideways as Martin and Ruth faced it

A little way up the stairs, outlined against the tall arched window, stood Aunt Cicely. Just below her was Ricky, asking questions. They were oblivious to any newcomers.

'Really, Ricky. It is nothing at all I only wish to lie down.' The voice floated, with whispering-gallery effect through the cool dim hall.

'But they said—'

' They said.' They always say.' Seen closer at hand, in Aunt Cicely's faded prettiness there was some quality which was eerily familiar to Martin. Was it a faint resemblance to Jenny? Jenny thirty years older? 'But there is something,' she continued, 'that you have got to learn. Very soon, I'm afraid. I have telephoned to Lady Brayle. Now don't detain me, please.'

In her filmy Edwardian-looking dress, against the pallor of the arched window, she hurried upstairs. Ricky hesitated, irresolute, and then followed her. Ruth Callice almost impelled Martin to the left

They went through a high, square, green-painted room, on whose walls hung a collection of ancient fire-arms ranging from the match-lock to the Brown Bess. They emerged into a well-appointed library, of the same size and shape, with gilt cornice mouldings.

'Ah, my dear fellow!' said a familiar husky, powerful voice.

Stannard, in somewhat ungainly plus-fours, stood with his back to a white marble mantelpiece. On a round Regency table in front of him lay a large crackling document, once folded into many squares, now pressed open.

'Our hunt for man-eating tigers, in the psychical sense,' he went on, 'is almost ready. I have here—' he tapped the document with a pencil—'a plan of Pentecost Prison.. I’ve investigated it this afternoon. Come here, my