The Skeleton in the Clock

pattern.

Nonsense! The furniture didn't get up, sportively, and rearrange itself overnight Such furniture, which suggested cocktail glasses and a portable gramophone, could hold no suggestion of the sinister. Then why was he having this damnable feeling of being watched?

Watched from where?

This was only reaction from last night. That exhilarated mood couldn't have lasted anyway. A number of people were peacefully sleeping underneath him.

'But I've seen the other kind of murderer too,' he could remember Stannard saying, at a time which now seemed weeks instead of days ago. 'That's why I don't scoff at spiritual evil.'

Very well. Yet, whatever constitutes spiritual evil, it is confined to the dark and the unseen way. It has no strength, it is even ludicrous, in the calm early hours of a Sunday morning, on a commonplace roof-top where the furniture suggests a place for a party.

Martin strolled towards the northern side — careful of that ledge, now! — near the front Again he looked towards Pentecost Prison, wondering about Stannard. As he did so, two sentences went through his head.

'I regret to say that it is human blood.'

And, recurring from another time, another he had remembered before:

'If you should hear the alarm-bell. In the night, it will mean we are in serious trouble.'

He would like to see that alarm-bell. It would show the exact position of the condemned cell, where its rope hung. But, at such a distance, this was impossible. Idly he had noticed beside him a square table with a glassy- looking orange top. It might do for the tea-tray when Jenny arrived. On the table, he now suddenly observed, lay a pair of field-glasses.

Martin laughed aloud. This was like making a wish and having it answered by a flick of the lamp. They were very old glasses of antiquated pattern: the leather scuffed and peeling, the leather strap worn thin. But they might as a matter of curiosity, find the bell on top of the prison. He picked up the field-glasses.

'Jenny, where's that tea?' he called aloud.

Easy! Mustn't go bawling ‘where's that tea' when people are trying to sleep on a lethargic morning with all the windows open. He had said it only because again he felt that someone, with steady and shining eyes, was watching him. Never mind! He turned back to the field-glasses.

It is later than you think.

What made him hesitate, and inspect the glasses more closely, was not the motto on the sundial. It was an idea. He was not well posted on the facts of the Fleet case; H.M. and Masters had said little or nothing. But he did know, from two persons' accounts, that Sir George Fleet had come up to the roof with a pair of field-glasses.

Martin's first idea, characteristically, was a recollection of that grisly ghost-story by M. R. James, in which such glasses contain a fluid brewed from dead men's bones. Then, with a hot-and-cold sensation, he wondered if he might have solved the Fleet mystery while still knowing only a part of the facts.

You could, they said, play strange tricks with optical illusions.

As for the technical side — curse the technical side: he had no knowledge — that could only be guesswork.

'But suppose,' Martin said aloud to the mist-world about him, 'there's something wrong with the lenses that make distances wrong. He walks towards the front of the roof. He thinks he's farther from that six-inch parapet than he really is. He comes nearly to the edge, starts to take another step, stumbles as though he'd been pushed…'

It could be tried. Martin, facing towards Pentecost Prison and well back from the edge, lifted the field-glasses to his eyes. The lenses were polished, in focus for about a hundred yards, and very clear. Yet such is the power of suggestion, in such fashion can it poison, that he could not keep the glasses at his eyes for more than a brief look. He rattled them down on the glassy-looking table.

This infuriated him. Were those glasses left here, so very obviously, either to entrap or hoax him? Nonsense; it was all nerves.

Very deliberately, to show himself it was so, he turned round. He sauntered to the front of the roof at the middle, and stood just inside the little ledge. Deliberately he looked out over a countryside submerged in mist: left, right, and across to the gables of the Dragon's Rest

Then two things happened.

A distant sound — on its first tremor faint and creaky, but gathering volume, gathering voice — shook out with a creak-and-clang, creak-and-clang, metallic bell-notes banging across a hush of morning, clang-and-call, clang-and-call, so that Martin stood rigid with realization of what it was. The alarm-bell at Pentecost was ringing.

He did not turn round. He had not time to turn round.

A pair of human hands, just behind him, lunged out and gave him a violent shove in the middle of the back.

Martin had just that flash-hundredth of a second, with the bell-note in his ears, to understand he had been pitched forward — head foremost, but a little sideways — pitched forward over the ledge into a sea of mist After that he felt no pain; he felt nothing at all.

Chapter 13

From the right came a faint, steady ticking, just outside the circle of a shaded light The ticking grew stronger (it was a watch on a table) just as did reality. Consciousness looked out through almost-closed eyelids.

The first thoughts of Martin Drake were those which he had once or twice entertained during war-time. They were as follows:

Well, here I am again. What the hell's happened now? Pause for long reflection. Either this is damn serious or it's not serious at all, because I don't feel much. Ah, clever idea. I'm not flat on my back; I'm propped tip somehow.

Still with his eyelids open only a slit Martin sent tentative movements through his body. He felt stiff and shaken, but he wasn't bound up in anything. His right shoulder and a part of the chest pained, but his exploring left hand found no splint or bandage. He had a slight headache; yes, but only what felt like a smallish, narrow, oblong bandage.

Whereupon memory returned like an electric shock.

This wasn't war-time. He had been jabbed in the back by somebody's hands; he had taken a half-turning dive over the ledge into mist, with a bell-note in his ears and panic in his vitals. Sheer incredulity at the fact of being alive shook him fully alert; and he looked round wildly.

At his bedside, to the right was a large face, squarish and wrinkled, with an acquiline nose and a steady grey eye.

'Captain Drake,' said the Dowager Countess of Brayle.

Martin shut his eyes, and opened them again.

(And upon thy dazzling face, O madonna, I must first rest my eyes after being picked up off the flagstones and somehow pieced together. It couldn't be Jenny. It couldn't even be a good-looking nurse. It had to be you).

'Captain Drake,' pursued Lady Brayle, 'I will tell you very briefly what you wish to know. First: you are in the bedroom of the late Sir George Fleet Second: the time is nearly ten o'clock on Sunday night Third: Dr. Laurier has had to put five stitches across your forehead. Aside from this and some bad bruises, you have suffered no hurt'

Martin, propped up on both elbows, was staring at her incredulously.

'No — hurt,' repeated Lady Brayle, with measured emphasis. 'Dr. Laurier has kept you under opiates all day, in case there were effects of shock. I thought it unnecessary; and indeed,' she glanced at him, 'that appears to be the case.'

Martin leaned back on his pillow, head aching, to consider this. Then he pushed himself up again.

'Let's get this straight,' he begged. 'I fell off a forty-odd-foot roof on to flagstones? And all I've got are some