The Skeleton in the Clock

'Surely,' he cried, 'this is a…'

'It's damn funny,' said Ricky. 'How did this stuff get here? Why?'

Up went the influences or vibrations, up and upl Stannard inflated his thick chest and laughed.

'Are you a swordsman, Mr. Fleet?'

‘No,' said Ricky, standing up. '1 never liked it. It seems— Dago, somehow. Like sticking a man with a knife. But' and sheer vanity bubbled out of him, 'there was a time when I couldn't fly a plane, either. Fencing? I could learn it as easy as winkingl'

'Indeed?' mocked Stannard, showing teeth against the red face. 'When I saw you, you were such a very little pious boy.' Ricky whipped round, his grey eyes wide open in the dazzle of cross-light

'I may have been no giant then,' he said. 'But I could put-the-weight twenty-seven feet three inches when I was eleven years old, and I've got a cup to prove it How would you like to try a little strength-test now?'

'Thank you. But I have another kind of test in about ten minutes.'

'Unquestionably,' declared Dr. Laurier, 'a Toledo blade. Note also the ‘Christus Imperat’ engraved on the blade near the hilt and the beautifully, wrought pattern on the cup-hilt itself. I must have more light Excuse me.'

And he almost ran out of the room into the passage.

Martin too, having handed his lamp to Ricky, had drawn out a rapier to his taste. Like Laurier's, it was no clumsy double-edge blade; like Laurier's it was thin and tapering, for play with the point It had a large plain cup-hilt with broad quillons, so finely balanced in the hand that it seemed to bear its own weight

'Excuse, me,' Martin said — and also hurried out of the room.

It wasn't he told himself, that he felt fear. But he felt shut up in there. The condemned cell, twenty feet square, with its flowered peeling wallpaper, boiled with hatred and despair. He could have sworn (though he knew this for an illusion) that the rocking-chair swung a little.

But one touch of panic, real or only half-real, acts on human beings as on animals. Ruth, Stannard, and Ricky crowded after him.

At the far end of the passage, where the lamp stood slightly tilted on the floor, Dr. Laurier was bending over the thin Spanish blade to examine it For some reason, his prim pince-nez and iron grey hair and hollowed cheeks looked grotesque above the sports costume, like a clergyman's head on a clown. He was trembling. He straightened up, with a flash of pince-nez, when he saw Martin with the other cup-hilt

'Captain Drake!'' he said eagerly. 'Do you fence?'

'Yes. Most rapier-collectors do.'

'Ah!' said Dr. Hugh Laurier.

He advanced slowly, silhouetted against the eye of the lantern, its white glow spreading round and behind him. Turning his body sideways, he bent his knees tentatively and swept out the still-sharp point in insinuating challenge. His wrist turned in that short semi-circular movement, engage and disengage, by which fencers feel, as though by antennae, for an opening.

Insinuating, insinuating, moving forward..

Martin, without any sense of incongruity in time or place, instantly crossed points.

All of them, now, were far from normal.

'This is good,' Ricky threw at Martin. 'Give him hell, old boy!'

'Take your pleasure, gentlemen!' said Stannard. 'Stop it!' cried Ruth.

Her voice was not loud, but it pierced and begged. She had dodged round to the door of the execution shed. If anyone had looked at her then (nobody did) that person would have seen Ruth was far more terrified of these sharpened points than of any forces in Pentecost Prison.

'Look here, Ruth, we're only playing!' said Martin. 'Ricky!'

'Yes, old boy?'

'Put that lamp of yours at the other end, against the iron door. Propped up behind me just as the other one is behind him.'

Tick-ting went the blades, circling and feeling round each other.

The two facing lights sprang up, silhouetting both fencers

and somewhat clouding each other's right Tick-ting, tick-ting.

Of course, Martin knew, this was only playing. Feint-lunges, as harmless as the hop of insects; much threatening and scrape of feet; cats darting with sheathed claws. Yet he could feel his own heated excitement and feel through the thin blades the tensity of Dr. Lauder's arm.

'Only playing!', cried the latter, in a kind of ecstasy. Tick-ting. His eyes never moved from Martin's through the crossing-line of the points. 'Only playing!' He made a feint of darting in.

'For God's sake stop,' shrilled Ruth. 'I can't bear swords! I can't stand it! I—' Then, in horror, she pressed one hand over her mouth.

The tick-ting ended abruptly. Dr. Laurier disengaged and lunged.

It was a full lunge, with stamp of foot on asphalt Martin saw the glint on the blade; his wrist snapped two inches in parry; the point scarcely rasping above a whisper, flicked past his right sleeve.

Hugh Laurier, slow and clumsy on return, stood wide open to a riposte that would have skewered him like a fowl. Movements are automatic, as in boxing; Martin checked his lunge in time, he felt the sweat start out on his body, and then stood staring at the Doctor, who had lowered his point

'Captain Drake.'

Dr. Lauder's husky voice, impeded as though by too-large a tongue, faltered. 'I supped!' he said with great earnestness. 'I slipped!'

And he pointed to the gritty asphalt, where there was in fact a long gouge in grit from his right foot. The source of the accident was plain enough.

'But' said Dr. Laurier, fumbling at his pince-nez, 'I should not have lunged even half so far. It is incredible. I can't think what made me do it If any of my patients had seen me tonight—' He ran a hand over his long, hollowed face, exploring it in wonder. Then he added, in appeal, just five words.

'My life is very dull,' he said.

Martin, however, had become somewhat light-headed with wrath.

'It's quite all right,' he said. 'But, if you want to play like that I'll teach you how. Give me a hand, Ricky?' 'What's up?'

'There were a lot of old medicine-bottles in that room The corks will do as buttons for these rapiers. Bring the light'

Ruth cried out in protest Martin did not want to go into that condemned cell again, where to him the air was like a physical touch of evil. But in comparatively few minutes he might be in a worse place — across the passage — and locked into these rooms at that

He fought it to the back of his mind, while he and Ricky stumbled again over the heap of swords and daggers. More of them clanged and rolled as the light moved. Martin put down his cup-hilt ready to hand.

'Big corks or little corks for the ends of the swords?' demanded Ricky. 'There'd be more sport in little ones. If the point—' He paused, and Martin did not reply. They were both looking down at what had been revealed among the scattered swords.

It was an Italian dagger of the sixteenth century, of plain steel for blade, crosspiece, and handle, in a metal sheath of engraved design. It was not so large as we usually imagine such weapons. The blade, shaken almost out of a loose sheath, was so stained with blood that splashes smeared the crosspiece, and somebody evidently had tried to wipe off the lower part of the handle. It was fresh blood.

'Don't touch it!' said Ricky. 'They tell you never to…'

'Got to touch it' Martin, far less bothered by this than by the evil old room, lifted it by the top of the dagger and the end of the sheath. He inspected it 'Antique,' he said. 'But—'

'But what?'

The one cutting-edge has been ground to an edge like a razor. The point's just as sharp.' He raised his voice. 'Both the lawyer and the doctor bad better come in here. Keep Ruth behind you; don't let her look.'

There was a long silence, followed by a rush.

Stannard and Dr. Laurier carried the lamps. The former's black eyes were hard with suspicion. Dr. Laurier,