Beyond the Door

Larry pushed the front door open, grunting. He set his briefcase down and took off his hat. Then he saw Bob for the first time.

'Chambers. I'll be damned.' His eyes narrowed. 'What are you doing here?' He came into the dining-room. Doris drew her robe about her helplessly, backing away.

'I—' Bob began. 'That is, we—' He broke off, glancing at Doris. Suddenly the clock began to whirr. The cuckoo came rushing out, bursting into sound. Larry moved toward him.

'Shut that din off,' he said. He raised his fist toward the clock. The cuckoo snapped into silence and retreated. The door closed. 'That's better.' Larry studied Doris and Bob, standing mutely together.

'I came over to look at the clock,' Bob said. 'Doris told me that it's a rare antique and that—'

'Nuts. I bought it myself.' Larry walked up to him. 'Get out of here.' He turned to Doris. 'You too. And take that damn clock with you.'

He paused, rubbing his chin. 'No. Leave the clock here. It's mine; I bought it and paid for it.'

In the weeks that followed after Doris left, Larry and the cuckoo clock got along even worse than before. For one thing, the cuckoo stayed inside most of the time, sometimes even at twelve o'clock when he should have been busiest. And if he did come out at all he usually spoke only once or twice, never the correct number of times. And there was a sullen, uncooperative note in his voice, a jarring sound that made Larry uneasy and a little angry.

But he kept the clock wound, because the house was very still and quiet and it got on his nerves not to hear someone running around, talking and dropping things. And even the whirring of a clock sounded good to him.

But he didn't like the cuckoo at all. And sometimes he spoke to him.

'Listen,' he said late one night to the closed little door. 'I know you can hear me. I ought to give you back to the Germans—back to the Black Forest.' He paced back and forth. 'I wonder what they're doing now, the two of them. That young punk with his books and his antiques. A man shouldn't be interested in antiques; that's for women.'

He set his jaw. 'Isn't that right?'

The clock said nothing. Larry walked up in front of it. 'Isn't that right?' he demanded. 'Don't you have anything to say?'

He looked at the face of the clock. It was almost eleven, just a few seconds before the hour. 'All right. I'll wait until eleven. Then I want to hear what you have to say. You've been pretty quiet the last few weeks since she left.'

He grinned wryly. 'Maybe you don't like it here since she's gone.' He scowled. 'Well, I paid for you, and you're coming out whether you like it or not. You hear me?'

Eleven o'clock came. Far off, at the end of town, the great tower clock boomed sleepily to itself. But the little door remained shut. Nothing moved. The minute hand passed on and the cuckoo did not stir. He was someplace inside the clock, beyond the door, silent and remote.

'All right, if that's the way you feel,' Larry murmured, his lips twisting. 'But it isn't fair. It's your job to come out. We all have to do things we don't like.'

He went unhappily into the kitchen and opened the great gleaming refrigerator. As he poured himself a drink he thought about the clock.

There was no doubt about it—the cuckoo should come out, Doris or no Doris. He had always liked her, from the very start. They had got along well, the two of them. Probably he liked Bob too—probably he had seen enough of Bob to get to know him. They would be quite happy together, Bob and Doris and the cuckoo.

Larry finished his drink. He opened the drawer at the sink and took out the hammer. He carried it carefully into the dining-room. The clock was ticking gently to itself on the wall.

'Look,' he said, waving the hammer. 'You know what I have here? You know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to start on you—first.' He smiled. 'Birds of a feather, that's what you are—the three of you.'

The room was silent.

'Are you coming out? Or do I have to come in and get you?'

The clock whirred a little.

'I hear you in there. You've got a lot of talking to do, enough for the last three weeks. As I figure it, you owe me—'

The door opened. The cuckoo came out fast, straight at him. Larry was looking down, his brow wrinkled in thought. He glanced up, and the cuckoo caught him squarely in the eye.

Down he went, hammer and chair and everything, hitting the floor with a tremendous crash. For a moment the cuckoo paused, its small body poised rigidly. Then it went back inside its house. The door snapped tight-shut after it.

The man lay on the floor, stretched out grotesquely, his head bent over to one side. Nothing moved or stirred. The room was completely silent, except, of course, for the ticking of the clock.

'I see,' Doris said, her face tight. Bob put his arm around her, steadying her.

'Doctor,' Bob said, 'can I ask you something?'

'Of course,' the doctor said.

'Is it very easy to break your neck, falling from so low a chair? It wasn't very far to fall. I wonder if it might not have been an accident. Is there any chance it might have been—'

'Suicide?' the doctor rubbed his jaw. 'I never heard of anyone committing suicide that way. It was an accident; I'm positive.'

'I don't mean suicide,' Bob murmured under his breath, looking up at the clock on the wall. 'I meant something else.'

But no one heard him.