'Well for God's sake, just look behind them,' Crow snarled, again starting forward 'There's no need to rip them off the walls.'
'Here!' Pasty exclaimed, turning an enquiring eye on the outraged householder, 'these pictures worth anything then?'
'Only to a collector — you'd never find a fence for stuff like that,' Crow replied.
'Hah! Not so stupid, our recluse!' Joe grinned, 'But being clever won't get you anywhere, guv', except hospital maybe . . . Okay, Pasty, leave the man's dirty pictures alone. You—' He turned to Crow, — your study; we've been in there, but only passing through. Let's go, guy'; you can give us a hand to, er, shift things about.' He pushed Crow in the direction of the door.
Pasty was last to- enter the study. He did so shivering, an odd look crossing his face. Pasty did not know it but he was a singularly rare person, one of the world's few truly 'psychic' men. Crow was another — one who had the talent to a high degree — and he sensed Pasty's sudden feeling of apprehension.
'Snug little room, isn't it?' he asked, grinning cheerfully at the uneasy thug.
'Never mind how pretty the place is — try the panelling, Pasty,' Joe directed.
'Eh?' Pasty's mind obviously was not on the job. 'The panelling?' His eyes shifted nervously round the room.
'Yes, the panelling!' Joe studied his partner curiously. 'What's wrong with you, then?' His look of puzzlement turned to one of anger. 'Now come on, Pasty boy, get a grip! At this rate we'll be here all bleeding night!'
Now it happened that Titus Crow's study was the pride of his life, and the thought of the utter havoc his unwelcome visitors could wreak in there was a terrifying thing to him. He determined to help them in their abortive search as much as he could; they would not find anything — there was nothing to find! — but this way he could at least ensure as little damage as possible before they realized there was no money in the house and left. They were certainly unwilling to believe anything he said out the absence of substantive funds! But then again, to anyone not knowing him reasonably well — and few did — Crow's home and certain of its appointments might certainly point to a man of considerable means. Yet he was merely comfortable, not wealthy, and, as he had said, what money he did have was safe in a bank. The more he helped them get through with their search the quicker they would leave. He had just made up his mind to this effect when Pasty found the hidden recess by the fireside.
`Here!' The nervous look left Pasty's face as he turned to Joe. 'Listen to this.' He rapped on a square panel. The sound was dull, hollow. Pasty swung his cosh back purposefully.
'No, wait — I'll open it for you.' Crow held up his hands in protest.
'Go on then, get it open.' Joe ordered. Crow moved over to, the wall and expertly slid back the panel to reveal a dim shelf behind. On the shelf was a single book. Pasty pushed Crow aside, lifted out the book and read off its title:
The . . . what? . . . Cthaat Aquadingen! Huh!' Then his expression quickly turned to one of pure disgust and loathing. 'Ughhh!' He flung the book away from him across the room, hastily wiping his hands down his jacket. Titus Crow received a momentary but quite vivid mental message from the mind of the startled thug. It was a picture of things rotting in vaults of crawling darkness, and he could well understand why Pasty was suddenly trembling.
'That . . . that damn book's wet!' the shaken crook exclaimed nervously.
`No, just sweating!' Crow informed. 'The binding is, er, human skin, you see. Somehow it still retains the ability to sweat — a sure sign that it's going to rain.'
'Claptrap!' Joe snapped. 'And you get a grip of yourself,' he snarled at Pasty 'There's something about this place I don't like either, but I'm not letting it get me down.' He turned to Crow, his mouth strained and twisting in anger And from now on you speak when you're spoken to.' Then carefully, practicedly, he turned his head and slowly scanned the room, taking in the tall bookshelves with their many volumes, some ancient, others relatively modern, and he glanced at Pasty and grinned knowingly. 'Pasty, Joe ordered, 'get them books off the shelves — I want to see what's behind them. How about it, recluse, you got anything behind there?'
'Nothing, nothing at all, Crow quickly answered. 'For goodness sake don't go pulling them down; some of them are coming to pieces as it is. No!'
His last cry was one of pure protestation; horror at the defilement of his collection. The two thugs ignored him. Pasty, seemingly over his nervousness, happily went to work, scattering the books left, right and centre. Down came the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe, the first rare editions of Machen's and Lovecraft's fiction; then the more ancient works, of Josephus, Magnus, Levi, Borellus, Erdschluss and Wittingby; closely followed by a connected set on oceanic eviclass="underline" Gaston Le Fe's Dwellers in the Depths, Oswald's Legends of Liqualia, Gantley's Hydrophinnae, the German Unter-Zee Kulten and Hartrack' s In Pressured Places . .
Crow could merely stand and watch it all, a black rage growing in his heart; and Joe, not entirely insensitive to the occultist's mood, gripped his pistol a little tighter and unsmilingly cautioned him: 'Just take it easy, hermit There's still time to speak up — just tell us where you bide your money and it's all over. No? Okay, what's next?' His eyes swept the now littered room again, doming to rest in a dimly lighted corner where stood a p. at clock
In front of the clock — an instrument apparently of the 'grandfather' class; at least, from a distance of that appearance — stood a small occasional table bearing an adjustable reading-lamp, one or two books and a few scattered sheets of notepaper. Seeing the direction in which Joe's actions were leading him, Crow smiled inwardly and wished his criminal visitor all the best. If Joe could make anything of that timepiece, then he was a cleverer man than Titus Crow; and if he could actually open it, as is possible and perfectly normal with more orthodox clocks, then Crow would be eternally grateful to him. For the sarcophagus-like thing in the dim corner was that same instrument with which Crow had busied himself all the previous day and on many, many other days since first he purchased it more than ten years earlier. And none of his studies had done him a bit of good! He was still as unenlightened with regard to the clock's purpose as he had been a decade ago.
Allegedly the thing had belonged to one Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, once a distinguished student of occult and oriental mysteries and antiquities, but where de Marigny had come by the coffin-shaped clock was yet another mystery. Crow had purchased it on the assurance of its auctioneer that it was, indeed, that same timepiece mentioned in certain of de Marigny's papers as being 'a door on all space and time; one which only certain adepts — not all of this world — could use to its intended purpose!' There were, too, rumours that a certain Eastern mystic, the Swami Chandraputra, had vanished forever from the face of the Earth after squeezing himself into a cavity hidden beneath the panel of the lower part of the clock's coffin shape. Also, de Marigny had supposedly had the ability to open at will that door into which the Swami vanished — but that was a secret he had taken with him to the grave. Titus Crow had never been able to find even a keyhole; and while the dock weighed what it should for its size, yet when one rapped on the lower panel the sound such rappings- produced were not hollow as might be expected. A curious fact — a curious history altogether — but the clock itself was even more curious- to gaze upon or listen to
Even now Joe was doing just those things: looking at and listening to the clock. He had switched on and adjusted the reading-lamp so that its light fell upon the face of the peculiar mechanism. At first sight of that clock-face Pasty had gone an even paler shade of grey, with all his nervousness of a few minutes earlier instantly returned. Crow sensed his perturbation; he had had similar feelings while working on the great clock, but he had also had the advantage of understanding where such fears originated. Pasty was experiencing the same sensations he himself had known when first he saw the clock in the auction rooms. Again he gazed at it as he had then; his eyes following the flow of the weird hieroglyphs carved about the dial and the odd movements of the four hands, movements coinciding with no chronological system of earthly origin; and for a moment there reigned an awful silence in the study of Titus Crow. Only the strange clock's enigmatic and oddly paced ticking disturbed a quiet which otherwise might have been that of the tomb.