'That's no clock like any I've ever seen before!' exclaimed an awed Joe. 'What do you make of that, Pasty?'
Patsy gulped, his Adam's apple visibly bobbing. 'I . . . don't like it It . . . it's shaped like a damned coffin! And why has it four hands, and how come they move like ?' He stopped to compose himself a little, and with the cessation of his voice came a soft whispering from beyond the curtained windows. Pasty's eyes widened and his face went white as death. 'What's that?' His whisper was as soft as the sounds prompting it.
'For God's sake get a grip, will you?' Joe roared, shattering the quiet. He was completely oblivious to Pasty's psychic abilities. 'It's rain, that's what it is - what did you bleeding think it was, spooks? I don't know what's come over you, Pasty, damned if I do. You act as if the place was haunted or something.'
'Oh, but it is!' Crow spoke up. 'At least the garden is. A very unusual story, if you'd care to hear it.'
'We don't care to hear it,' Joe snarled. 'And I warned you before - speak when you're spoken to. Now, this. . clock! Get it open, quick.'
Crow had to hold himself to stop the ironic laughter he felt welling inside. 'I can't,' he answered, barely concealing a chuckle. 'I don't know how!'
'You what?' Joe shouted incredulously. 'You don't know how? What the hell d'you mean?'
'I mean what I say' Crow answered. 'So far as I know that clock's not been opened for well over thirty years!'
'Yes? S S. . . so where does it p .. . plug in?' Pasty enquired, stuttering over the words.
'Should it plug in?' Crow answered with his own question. Joe, however, saw just what Pasty was getting at; as, of course, had the 'innocent' Titus Crow
'Should it plug in, he asks!' Joe mimed sarcastically. He turned to Pasty. 'Good point, Pasty boy - now,' he turned back to Crow, menacingly, 'tell us something, recluse. If your little toy here isn't electric, and if you can't get it open - then just how do you wind it up?'
'I don't wind it up - I know nothing whatsoever of the mechanical principles governing it,' Crow answered. `You see that book there on the occasional table? Well, that's Walmsley's Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms and Ancient Inscriptions; I've been trying for years merely to understand the hieroglyphs on the dial, let alone open the thing. And several notable gentlemen students of matters concerning things not usually apparent or open to the man in the street have opinionated to the effect that yonder device is not a clock at all! I refer to Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, the occultist Ward Phillips of Rhode Island in America, and Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole in Yorkshire; all of them believe it to be a space-time machine — believed in the case of the first two mentioned, both those gentlemen now being dead — and I don't know enough about it yet to decide whether or not I agree with them! There's no money in it, if that's what you're thinking.'
`Well, I warned you, guv', Joe snarled, 'space-time machine! — My God! — H. G. bloody Wells, he thinks he is! Pasty, tie him up and gag him. I'm sick of his bleeding claptrap. He's got us nervous as a couple of cats, he has!'
'I'll say no more,' Crow quickly promised, 'you carry on. If you can get it open I'll be obliged to you; I'd like to know what's inside myself.'
'Come off it, guy',' Joe grated, then: 'Okay, but one more word — you end up immobile, right?' Crow nodded his acquiescence and sat on the edge of his great desk to watch the performance. He really did not expect the thugs to do much more than make fools of themselves. He had not taken into account the possibility — the probability — of violence in the solution of the problem. Joe, as a child, had never had much time for the two-penny wire puzzles sold in rthe novelty shops. He tried them once or twice, to be sure, but if they would not go first time — well, you could usually make them go — with a hammer! As it happened such violence was not necessary.
Pasty had backed up to the door. He was still slapping his cosh into his palm, but it was purely a reflex action now; a nervous reflex action. Crow got the impression that if Pasty dropped his cosh he would probably faint.
The panels, Pasty, Joe ordered. The panels in the clock.'
You do it,' Pasty answered rebelliously 'That's no clock and I'm not touching it There's something wrong here.'
Joe turned to him in exasperation. Are you crazy or something? It's a clock and nothing more! And this joker just doesn't want us to see inside. Now what does that suggest to you?'
'Okay, okay - but you do it this time I'll stay out of the way and watch funnyman here. I've got a feeling about that thing, that's all.' He moved over to stand near Crow who had not moved from his desk. Joe took his gun by the barrel and rapped gently on the panel below the dial of the dock at about waist height. The sound was sharp, solid. Joe turned and grinned at Titus Crow. There certainly seemed to be something in there. His grin rapidly faded when he saw Crow grinning back. He turned again to the object of his scrutiny and examined its sides, looking for hinges or other signs pointing to the thing being a hollow container of sorts. Crow could see from the crook's puzzled expression that he was immediately at a loss. He could have told Joe before he began that there was not even evidence of jointing; it was as if the body of the instrument was carved from a solid block of timber - timber as hard as iron.
But Crow had underestimated the determined thug. Whatever Joe's shortcomings as a human being, as a safecracker he knew no peer. Not that de Marigny's clock was in any way a safe, but apparently the same principles applied! For as Joe's hands moved expertly up the sides of the panelling there came a loud click and the mad ticking of the instrument's mechanism went totally out of kilter. The four hands on the careen dial stood still for an instant of time before commencing fresh movements in alien and completely inexplicable sequences. Joe stepped nimbly back as the large panel swung silently open. He stepped just a few inches too far back, jolting the occasional table. The reading-lamp went over with a crash, momentarily breaking the spell of the wildly oscillating hands and crazy ticking of de Marigny's clock. The corner was once more thrown in shadow and for a moment Joe stood there undecided, put off stroke by his early success. Then he gave a grunt of triumph, stepped forward and thrust his empty left hand into the darkness behind the open panel.
Pasty sensed the outsideness at the same time as Crow. He leapt across the room shouting: 'Joe, Joe — for God's sake, leave it alone . . . leave it alone!' Crow, on the other hand, spurred by no such sense of comradeship, quickly stood up and backed away. It was not that he was in any way a coward, but he knew something of Earth's darker mysteries — and of the mysteries of other, spheres — and besides, he sensed the danger of interfering with an action having origin far from the known side of nature. Suddenly the corner was dimly illumined by an eerie, dappled light from the open panel; and Joe, his arm still groping beyond that door, gave a yell of utter terror and tried to pull back. The ticking was now insanely aberrant, and the wild sweeps of the four hands about the dial were completely confused and orderless. Joe had braced himself against the frame of the opening, fighting some unseen menace within the strangely lit compartment, trying desperately to withdraw his arm. Against all his effort his left shoulder abruptly jammed forward, into the swirling light, and at the same moment he stuck the barrel of his gun into the opening and fired six shots in rapid succession.