The Skeleton in the Clock

Martin surveyed the back of the house. 'But how do we get in?'

'Darling, nobody ever locks doors hereabouts. Anyone can walk in anywhere.'

'But we'll wake the whole house up, won't we?'

'Wait; I've got it!' breathed Jenny. She pointed to a middle door hardly discernible through mist 'I’ll go into the kitchen and make tea; Aunt Cicely won't mind. You go on up to the roof.'

The roof?'

'It will be above the mist and clear air. We can do it without disturbing anybody, and we'll have the whole place to ourselves. I'll be up as soon as the kettle boils.'

'That,' declared Martin, 'is one of the better ideas. But can't I help you?'

'Please let me do it myself,' begged Jenny. Her look was irresistible… 'If you knew how much I want to… to show … Please let me do it myself, and bring it up to you!'

'Yours to command, Jenny.' It pleased him immensely. 'Can I get up to the roof from here?'

Jenny indicated a small door at the north-west corner.

'The stairs,' she said, 'are enclosed. It's a kind of thin box. Do be careful, because they're nearly as steep as a carpeted ladder.'

'I know, I’ve gone op there from another floor.' He looked at the kitchen, and then at Jenny. 'Ten minutes?' 'Less, if I can make it'

With even more acute exhilaration, Martin sauntered through mist-wreaths towards the door. It was set up well above ground-height on five concrete steps. The stairs, if he remembered correctly, were very narrow; they turned back the other way at each landing, which had a window and a door. Though half expecting to find the door bolted, he discovered it was open. He had shut himself into the cramped stair-well, whose dingy carpet showed holes and whose window-light filtered through mist, when another door at his right hand opened.

Framed in the doorway, against the dim-lit background of the dining-room, stood Dr. Hugh Laurier.

From his hard, white collar to his polished shoes, from the precision of the dark necktie to the pressing of the dark blue suit Dr. Laurier was so immaculately groomed that Martin felt like a tramp dragged out of an areaway. On Dr. Laurier there might never have been a speck of dust in his life.

'Capta — I beg your pardon: Mr. Drake.'

His voice had the pleasant engaging professional level.

'Ordinarily,' Dr. Laurier uttered a short laugh, 'it would be hard to explain my presence at this hour. It would, indeed. But I was like the boy with the serial story. After going home, I returned here. I had to know what happened.'

'You'll have to ask Stannard,' replied Martin, feeling at his unshaven chin. 'He'll be along in a moment.’'

'Mr. Stannard didn't come back with you?'

'No.'

'Isn't that rather odd?'

'Nothing odd about it I didn't feel like having company, that's all.'

Martin started to take a step up, but the doctor detained him.

'Mr. Drake. One other matter. I could not—' Dr. Laurier emphasized the words more than italics can convey —'speak of this in the presence of others. I want to say a word or two; then ask you not to remember it'

'Of course.'

Dr. Laurier peered behind him. In the dining-room, the tall curtains of heavy red velvet were still drawn closely. The light of a single small bulb in a wall lamp touched his grey hair, his pince-nez. Martin remembered him silhouetted against a different radiance.^v

'Mr. Drake. My slip with the rapier was honestly an accident.'

'But, man! I never thought it was anything else!' The other smiled whimsically.

'So many times,' he said, 'I have thrown myself under my opponent's guard. Or dropped sideways, on one knee, to cut with the double-edged blade!'

If this referred to the rules of fencing, it was weird talk. Dr. Laurier saw Martin's expression.

'In imagination,' he explained dryly. 'Are you well read in the history of small-arms?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'There was the 'Fifty-fifty,' where you threw yourself in to catch his unedged blade in your left hand and kill him with the right. If your left hand in the least slipped, you were a dead man. There was the Spanish 'Low-High' with double-edgers: you parried a cut low to the right; you dropped on one knee to cut across the back of the knees above the ankles; then rose and thrust him through the side. There was the 'Vanity'; a very narrow mirror set into the blade along its length. Only a thread of it, unperceived till play began; but it blinded him with its flash.

'There was the botte de Jesuite, mentioned in Esmond. It really existed, and was a perfectly fair device of swordsmanship, unlike the others; they were outlawed. — But I bore you,' Dr. Laurier added evenly.

'Not a bit. But some other time…'

'I speak,' said the doctor, 'of what interests me privately. It is the hobby of a lonely man. Do you understand?'

'I do.'

'Nor am I a good swordsman as yet. Who can be, with so little opportunity to practice? My father fought two duels.'

Martin, who had been about to get away as politely as possible, felt the tangle of ugly incidents catch him again like a net of hooks.

'By the way,' he said. 'Chief Inspector Masters wants to see you.'

Dr. Laurier looked frankly puzzled,

'Chief… ah, yes! He and some other man came to my home last night before I joined you here. They asked some questions, completely mysterious to me, about a clock formerly owned by my father.'

'That's not on his mind now. He wants to know,' Martin cleared his throat 'whether what we found on that dagger was human blood.'

Dr. Laurier remained silent for a brief time.

'I regret to say,' he answered, 'that it was human blood.’’

Martin climbed the treacherous stairs. Would the lid bang on memory this time? Not quite, perhaps; but enough. Oh, to the devil with it anyway! In a very short time, any minute now, Jenny would be here. And he emerged on the roof.

Jenny was right The roof-top lay just a few feet above the mist. In every direction it swam and hovered, so that only a few tree-tops showed green like islands. Far over across the way, the front of the Dragon's Rest lay submerged well above its gable-windows, the three gables rising to steep peaks with plaster faces and window- curtains drawn close.

The sky was clear and warm; no sun, but the hint of a sun. Dead stillness here, and it seemed as lonely as Pentecost

As Martin took a few experimental steps to see how they sounded on concrete in this mist-world, the thought of Pentecost made him glance round.

Pentecost Prison — the observation occurred to him quite gravely — had not-moved. Though it was a very long distance away, he could see the mist lapping nearly to the top of its circular wall. He could pick out no details, and wished he could.

By the way, oughtn't Stannard to be showing up soon? As Dr. Laurier had asked, where was Stannard?

Martin made a complete circuit of the roof, studying the short chimneys and the plentitude of garden furniture. A flick of disquiet touched him when he thought of Stannard. But the man had distinctly said he was all right; he must have lost his way in the mist

Hold on! What's wrong with this roof-top?

Nothing wrong, exactly. Yet…

Martin was now standing towards the front but turning slowly round to study it eastwards. There stood the orange-and-chromium chairs, settees, and tables, vivid against brownish concrete and a pale sky. When he had come up to the roof yesterday evening to see H.M. and Masters, he had taken no particular account of the furniture. Yet it seemed to him now that it was now arranged — especially the folding beach-chairs — in a different