The Skeleton in the Clock

'Paper,' grunted Masters. 'Bales and boxes and tied-up bundles! Stacked as high as your head and higher, through practically every corridor and cell and room! Only a little space so you can move between them and the wall. Oh, ah. I expect' his eye wandered round, 'I expect anybody (hurrum!) anybody who was on the stout side wouldn't be able to get in at all.'

Then every superior air dropped away from him.

'Fair's fair,' snapped Masters, 'and messing about is messing about I ask you — straight, now—is there anything in all this 'pink flash' business?'

'There is. But that's not the main reason why we're here, Masters. We're here to prevent another murder.'

Masters straightened up. The breath whistled through his nostrils.

'Another…?'

'That's right'

'But whose murder?'

'Decide for yourself, son. In this whole case, where there are as many women as there are men, who would you say is practically certain to get murdered?'

Chapter 9

There was a bright quarter-moon, that night, in a soft blue-black sky without stars. The darkness caressed, it invited, anyone who sat under the hedgerows or followed the broad winding road. Its warmth would have stirred the blood of lovers, and doubtless did, somewhere under those trees.

The side road which led to Pentecost Prison had once been paved. Now, between the tall grass on each side, it lay cracked and broken and ridged because it had not been repaired for decades. The motor-car, with one wing banging, jolted badly on its surface. But, since the road was straight, the car's headlamps picked up far ahead the high iron double-gates against a rounded face of bricks once painted grey.

A few seconds more the car jolted off the asphalt to a gravel circle now thick-grown with weeds. The handbrake ticked back with a decisive wrench and the clanking engine was shut off, letting in stillness.

First John Stannard jumped out of the car, from the front seat. Then Ricky Fleet from behind the wheel. Then, from the back, Martin Drake, Ruth Callice, and — still to the surprise and very faint discomfort of the others —'young’ Dr. Hugh Laurier.

'I am extremely grateful…' Dr. Laurier began. But his voice rang out loudly, and he stopped. The clock on the car's dashboard indicated the time as twenty-five minutes to midnight

Footsteps swished among weeds. Someone laughed nervously.

'Got the lamps?' called Ricky's voice. 'Here,' came the husky assurance of Stannard; and he chuckled.

'Shall I leave these car-lights on?' Martin demanded.

'Yes,' assented Stannard's voice. 'After all, three of you will be leaving in twenty-five minutes.'

Seen only by car-lamps, magnified by darkness and a quarter-moon, the grey-brick roundness of Pentecost appeared immense. Its air of intense desolation was heightened, towards the north-west, by the ghost-village which still straggled towards its wall.

When men fretted out their sentences here, when they heated their brains and assured everybody they would be free next week, there grew up round it that huddle of cottages which lie near any country prison. Here lived the married officers, the non-convict staff, their wives and relatives and children: all the residue from that force which made the machine-shop hum, the food-tins bang, the endless line shuffle round and round the exercise yard. These houses, now, were as dead as Pentecost

'Is everybody ready?' asked Stannard.

All five had gathered round the car-lights. Stannard had told them to wear old clothes: which Ruth interpreted as meaning black slacks and a red sweater, Stannard his ungainly plus-fours, the others sports-coats and flannels.

Ruth laughed softly. So did Dr. Laurier.

'You know,' Ruth observed, '1 thought this evening would never end. I almost choked over dinner.'

'So did I,' said Ricky, for some reason deeply impressed by this coincidence of thought. I’m sorry Mother didn't come down after all.'

'I assure you, Richard,' declared the precise and conservative Dr. Laurier, 'that Lady Fleet is in no danger. I have given her half a grain of morphia. We, on the other hand, have a stimulant'

All five were strung up, each of them not quite his or her normal self, which may account for much that happened afterwards. Each would have denied this. But if anybody had been watching them — and there was someone watching — that person would have seen it in a quick movement a turn and gleam of an eye against the head-lights.

'I should have thought' said Ruth, 'that you people who lived in this district must have been terrified. I mean, of escaped prisoners.'

Stannard chuckled, his lips folded back from gleaming teeth.

'My dear, you are still confusing local prisons with convict prisons.'

'I'm afraid I don't remember the difference.'

'Come, now! If a man's sentence is anything from six months to two years, with time off for good behaviour, he won't endanger it by trying to escape. Some of them go mad, of course. But an attempted break is rare.' Then Stannard's eyes narrowed. 'Stop, though I There is an alarm-bell, aside from the ordinary main bell'

'What for?'

'You can see for yourself. Shall we go?'

From a bulging pocket he produced three flattish electric lanterns, of the sort carried on the belt by a policeman. Taking one himself, Stannard handed, the second to Martin and the third to Ricky.

As they approached the high iron gates, the bright pale-white beams of the lamps flickered and roved. They touched the spikes atop the brick wait They swept past the lettering. 'Fiat Justitia, MDCCCXCVI,' carved in stone over the doors. They raked the ground. Except for the ruts of heavy Army lorries trundling paper-bales, no approach marred Pentecost's weedy gravel.

From his other side pocket—'Don't worry; I oiled the lock this afternoon!' Stannard brought out an immense old-fashioned key, rust-coloured but not rusty. To his annoyance he had to use two hands in turning it. Then the lock clicked with a heavy snap like a game-trap.

'Now!' he ordered, a little out of breath. 'One of you at each door. Push!'

The big doors moved soundlessly (oiled hinges too?), and fairly easily. The breath of the prison, which at one time might not have been too pleasant, blew out at them. Now it was only a thick warmth overlaid by a mustiness of dried paper-bales. A little way ahead then’ lights caught a large arched barrier of vertical bars, with an opening in it like an ordinary door.

'Swing the gates shut,' called Stannard. 'We don't want intruders.'

Martin and Ricky, their lamps hooked on their belts, complied. Inside they saw a heavy and complicated pattern of bolts, which they did not touch. The next moment they were shut up inside Pentecost

Nerves sang a little more thinly, pulse-beats were a trifle faster.

'Just a minute.' Ruth's quiet voice rose hollowly.

'It's all right old girl!' Ricky assured her.

'But Stan told us at dinner,' continued Ruth, 'that they've' stored this place full. If they've filled up the — the condemned cell and the execution shed, what are you going to do?'

'They haven't my dear.' Stannard's chuckle, echoing, sounded huge. 'Either they were respectful or they hadn't the stomach. Our little self-contained flat is empty. Now follow me closely, and don't lose my light.'

Martin Drake glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. Eighteen minutes to twelve.

Behind the barrier of vertical iron bars, they saw a mountain of brown-paper bales. Holding his lamp ahead, Stannard slipped sideways through the opening in the barrier, and edged to the left Ruth, with an appealing glance at Martin, followed Stannard. Martin followed her. Dr. Laurier came next with Ricky at the end.