The Big Clock

by Kenneth Fearing

  For about a minute a small meteor ran up and down and around the downstairs rooms, then disappeared, piping. Georgette came back, after a while, for her first cigarette and her second cup of coffee. She said, presently, looking at me through a thin band of smoke: “Would you like to go back to newspaper work, George?”

  “God forbid. I never want to see another fire engine as long as I live. Not unless I’m riding on it, steering the back end of a hook-and-ladder truck. The fellow on the back end always steers just the opposite to the guy in the driver’s seat. I think.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t like Crimeways. You don’t really like Janoth Enterprises at all. You’d like to steer in just the opposite direction to all of that.”

  “You’re wrong. Quite wrong. I love that old merry-go-round.”

  Georgette hesitated, unsure of herself. I could feel the laborious steps her reasoning took before she reached a tentative, spoken conclusion: “I don’t believe in square pegs in round holes. The price is too great. Don’t you think so, George?” I tried to look puzzled. “I mean, well, really, it seems to me, when I think about it, sometimes, you were much happier, and so was I, when we had the roadhouse.

  Weren’t we? For that matter, it was a lot more fun when you were a race-track detective. Heavens, even the all-night broadcasting job. It was crazy, but I liked it.”

  I finished my waffle, tracing the same circuit of memories I knew that she, too, was following. Timekeeper on a construction gang, race-track operative, tavern proprietor, newspaper legman, and then rewrite, advertising consultant, and finally—what? Now?

  Of all these experiences I didn’t know which filled me, in retrospect, with the greater pleasure or the more annoyance.

  And I knew it was a waste of time to raise such a question even in passing.

  Time.

  One runs like a mouse up the old, slow pendulum of the big clock, time, scurries around and across its huge hands, strays inside through the intricate wheels and balances and springs of the inner mechanism, searching among the cobwebbed mazes of this machine with all its false exits and dangerous blind alleys and steep runways, natural traps and artificial baits, hunting for the true opening and the real prize.

  Then the clock strikes one and it is time to go, to run down the pendulum, to become again a prisoner making once more the same escape.

  For of course the clock that measures out the seasons, all gain and loss, the air Georgia breathes, Georgette’s strength, the figures shivering on the dials of my own inner instrument board, this gigantic watch that fixes order and establishes the pattern for chaos itself, it has never changed, it will never change, or be changed.

  I found I had been looking at nothing. I said: “No. I’m the roundest peg you ever saw.”

  Georgette pinched out her cigarette, and asked: “Are you driving in?”

  I thought of Roy and Hagen and the Silver Lining.

  “No. And I may be home late. I’ll call you.”

  “All right, I’ll take you to the station. I may go in for a while myself, after lunch.”

  Finishing my coffee I sped through the headlines of the first three pages of the morning paper and found nothing new. A record-breaking bank robbery in St. Paul, but not for us. While Georgette gave instructions to Nellie I got into my coat and hat, took the car out of the garage, and honked. When Georgette came out I moved over and she took the wheel.

  This morning, Marble Road was crisp but not cold, and very bright. Patches of snow from a recent storm still showed on the brown lawns and on the distant hills seen through the crooked black lace of the trees. Away from Marble Road, our community of rising executives, falling promoters, and immovable salesmen, we passed through the venerable but slightly weatherbeaten, huge square boxes of the original citizens. On the edge of the town behind Marble Road lay the bigger estates, scattered through the hills. Lots of gold in them, too. In about three more years, we would stake a claim of several acres there, ourselves.

  “I hope I can find the right drapes this afternoon,” said Georgette, casually. “Last week I didn’t have time. I was in Doctor Dolson’s office two solid hours.”

  “Yes?” Then I understood she had something to say. “How are you and Doc Dolson coming along?”

  She spoke without taking her eyes from the road. “He says he thinks it would be all right.”

  “He thinks? What does that mean?”

  “He’s sure. As sure can be. Next time I should be all right.”

  “That’s swell.” I covered her hand on the wheel. “What have you been keeping it secret for?”

  “Well. Do you feel the same?”

  “Say, why do you think I’ve been paying Dolson? Yes. I do.”

  “I just wondered.”

  “Well, don’t. When, did he say?”

  “Any time.”

  We had reached the station and the 9:08 was just pulling in. I kissed her, one arm across her shoulders, the other arm groping for the handle of the door.

  “Any time it is. Get ready not to slip on lots of icy sidewalks.”

  “Call me,” she said, before I closed the door.

  I nodded and made for the station. At the stand inside I took another paper and went straight on through. There was plenty of time. I could see an athlete still running, a block away.

  The train ride, for me, always began with Business Opportunities, my favorite department in any newspaper, continued with the auction room news and a glance at the sports pages, insurance statistics, and then amusements. Finally, as the train burrowed underground, I prepared myself for the day by turning to the index and reading the gist of the news. If there was something there, I had it by the time the hundreds and thousands of us were intently journeying across the floor of the station’s great ant heap, each of us knowing, in spite of the intricate patterns we wove, just where to go, just what to do.

  And five minutes later, two blocks away, I arrived at the Janoth Building, looming like an eternal stone deity among a forest of its fellows. It seemed to prefer human sacrifices, of the flesh and of the spirit, over any other token of devotion. Daily, we freely made them.

  I turned into the echoing lobby, making mine.

  George Stroud III

  JANOTH ENTERPRISES, filling the top nine floors of the Janoth Building, was by no means the largest of its kind in the United States. Jennett-Donohue formed a larger magazine syndicate; so did Beacon Publications, and Devers & Blair. Yet our organization had its special place, and was far from being the smallest among the many firms publishing fiction and news, covering political, business, and technical affairs.

  Newsways was the largest and best-known magazine of our group, a weekly publication of general interest, with a circulation of not quite two million. That was on floor thirty-one. Above it, on the top floor of the building, were the business offices—the advertising, auditing, and circulation departments, with Earl’s and Steve Hagen’s private headquarters.

  Commerce was a business weekly with a circulation of about a quarter of a million, far less than the actual reading public and the influence it had. Associated with it were the four-page daily bulletin, Trade, and the hourly wire service, Commerce Index. These occupied floor thirty.

  The twenty-ninth floor housed a wide assortment of technical newspapers and magazines, most of them published monthly, ranging from Sportland to The Frozen Age (food products), The Actuary (vital statistics), Frequency (radio and television), and Plastic Tomorrow. There were eleven or twelve of these what’s-coming-next and how-to-do-it publications on this floor, none with a large circulation, some of them holdovers from an inspired moment of Earl Janoth’s, and possibly now forgotten by him.

  The next two floors in descending order held the morgue, the library and general reference rooms, art and photo departments, a small but adequate first-aid room in frequent use, a rest room, the switchboards, and a reception room for general inquiries.
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br />   The brains of the organization were to be found, however, on floor twenty-six. It held Crimeways, with Roy Cordette as Associate Editor (Room 2618), myself as Executive Editor (2619), Sydney Kislak and Henry Wyckoff, Assistant Editors stinct—” Roy slowly opened and closed the fingers of the hand on the desk before him. “But I think we ought to suggest it to Wheeler for Sexes. Or perhaps Personalities.”

  “Fashions,” murmured Sydney.

  Roy continued to look expectantly at Nat, across whose candid features had struggled a certain amount of reluctant admiration. He concentrated again on his notes, apparently decided to pass over two or three items, then resumed.

  “There’s a terrific bank robbery in St. Paul. Over half a million dollars, the biggest bag in history.”

  “The biggest without benefit of law,” Henry Wyckoff amended. “That was last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. I got the Minneapolis bureau on it, and we already know there was a gang of at least three people, maybe more, working on this single job for more than three years. The thing about this job is that the gang regularly incorporated themselves three years ago, paid income taxes, and paid themselves salaries amounting to $175,000 while they were laying their plans and making preparations for the holdup. Their funds went through the bank they had in mind, and it’s believed they had several full-dress rehearsals before yesterday, right on the spot. A couple of the guards had even been trained, innocently it’s believed, to act as their extras. One of them got paid off with a bullet in the leg.”

  Nat stopped and Roy appeared to gaze through him, a pinch of a frown balancing itself delicately against the curiosity in his blue, tolerant eyes.

  “Figures again,” he delicately judged. “What is the difference whether it is a half million, half a thousand, or just half a dollar? Three years, three months, or three minutes? Three criminals, or three hundred? What makes it so significant that it must be featured by us?”

  “The technical angle, don’t you think?” suggested Wyckoff. “Staying within the law while they laid the groundwork. Those rehearsals. Working all that time right through the bank. When you think of it, Roy, why, no bank or business in the world is immune to a gang with sufficient patience, resources, and brains. Here’s the last word in criminal technique, matching business methods against business methods. Hell, give enough people enough time and enough money and brains, and eventually they could take Fort Knox.”

  “Exactly,” said Roy. “And is that new? Attack catching up with defense, defense overtaking attack, that is the whole history of crime. We have covered the essential characteristics of this very story, in its various guises, many times before—too many. I can’t see much in that for us. We’ll give it two or three paragraphs in Crime Wavelets. ‘Sober, hard-working thugs invest $175,000, three years of toil, to stage a bank robbery. Earn themselves a profit of $325,000, net.’ At three men working for three years,” he calculated, “that amounts to something over thirty-six thousand a year each. Yes. ‘This modest wage, incommensurate with the daring and skill exercised, proves again that crime does not pay—enough.’ About like that. Now, can’t we get something on a little higher level? We still need three leading articles.”

  Nat Sperling had no further suggestions to make. I saw it was already 10:45, and with little or nothing done, an early lunch seemed an idle dream. Also, I would have to write off any hope for a conference today with Roy and Hagen. Tony Watson took the ball, speaking in abrupt, nervous rushes and occasionally halting altogether for a moment of pronounced anguish. It seemed to me his neurasthenia could have shown more improvement, if not a complete cure, for the four or five thousand dollars he had spent on psychoanalysis. Still, considering the hazards of our occupation, it could be that without those treatments Tony would today be speechless altogether.

  “There’s a bulletin by the Welfare Commission,” he said, and after we waited for a while he went on, “to be published next month. But we can get copies. I’ve read it. It’s about the criminal abortion racket. Pretty thorough. The commission spent three years investigating. They covered everything, from the small operators to the big, expensive, private s-sanatoriums. Who protects them, why and how. Total estimated number every year, amount of money the industry represents, figures on deaths and prosecutions. Medical effects, pro and con. Causes, results. It’s a straight, exhaustive study of the subject. First of its kind. Official, I mean.”

  Long before Tony had finished, Roy’s chin was down upon his chest, and at the close he was making swift notes.

  “Do they reach any conclusions? Make any recommendations?” he asked.

  “Well, the report gives a complex of causes. Economic reasons are the chief cause of interrupted pregnancies among married women, and among—”

  “Never mind that. We’ll have to reach our own conclusions. What do they say about old-age assistance?”

  “What? Why, nothing, as I recall.”

  “Never mind, I think we have something. We’ll take that bulletin and show what it really means. We’ll start by giving the figures for social security survivor benefits. Funeral allowances, in particular, and make the obvious contrasts. Here, on the one hand, is what our government spends every year to bury the dead, while here, at the other end of the scale of life, is what the people spend to prevent birth. Get in touch with the Academy of Medicine and the College of Physicians and Surgeons for a short history of the practice of abortion, and take along a photographer. Maybe they have a collection of primitive and modern instruments. A few pictures ought to be very effective. A short discussion of ancient methods ought to be even more effective.”

  “Magic was one of them,” Bert Finch told Tony.

  “Fine,” said Roy. “Don’t fail to get that in, too. And you might get in touch with the Society of American Morticians for additional figures on what we spend for death, as contrasted with what is spent to prevent life. Call up a half a dozen department stores, ask for figures on what the average expectant mother spends on clothes and equipment up to the date of birth. And don’t forget to bring in a good quotation or two from Jonathan Swift on Irish babies.”

  He looked at Tony, whose meager, freckled features seemed charged with reserve.

  “That isn’t exactly what I had in mind, Roy. I thought we’d simply dramatize the findings. The commission’s findings.”

  Roy drew a line under the notes on his pad.

  “That’s what we will be doing, a take-out on the abortion racket. A round-up of the whole subject of inheritance and illegitimacy. But we will be examining it on a higher level, that’s all. Just go ahead with the story now, and when the bulletin comes out we’ll check through it and draw attention to the real implications of the general picture, at the same time pointing out the survey’s omissions. But don’t wait for the survey to be released. Can you have a rough draft in, say, two or three weeks?”

  Tony Watson’s strangled silence indicated that about two thousand dollars’ worth of treatments had been shot to hell. Presently, though, he announced: “I can try.”

  The conference went on, like all those that had gone before, and, unless some tremendous miracle intervened, like many hundreds sure to follow.

  Next month Nat Sperling’s quadruple-slaying on a lonely farm would become a penthouse shooting in Chicago, Tony’s bent for sociological research would produce new parole board reports, novel insurance statistics, a far-reaching decision of the Supreme Court. Whatever the subject, it scarcely mattered. What did matter was our private and collective virtuosity.

  Down the hall, in Sydney’s office, there was a window out of which an almost forgotten associate editor had long ago jumped. I occasionally wondered whether he had done so after some conference such as this. Just picked up his notes and walked down the corridor to his own room, opened the window, and then stepped out.

  But we were not insane.

  We were not children exchanging solemn fantasies in some progressive nursery. Nor were the things we we
re doing here completely useless.

  What we decided in this room, more than a million of our fellow-citizens would read three months from now, and what they read they would accept as final. They might not know they were doing so, they might even briefly dispute our decisions, but still they would follow the reasoning we presented, remember the phrases, the tone of authority, and in the end their crystallized judgments would be ours.

  Where our own logic came from, of course, was still another matter. The moving impulse simply arrived, and we, on the face that the giant clock turned to the public, merely registered the correct hour of the standard time.

  But being the measure by which so many lives were shaped and guided gave us, sometimes, strange delusions.

  At five minutes to twelve, even the tentative schedule lined up for the April book was far too meager. Leon Temple and Roy were engaged in a rather aimless cross-discussion about a radio program that Leon construed as a profound conspiracy against reason, and therefore a cardinal crime, with Roy protesting the program was only a minor nuisance.

  “It’s on a pretty low level, and why should we give it free advertising?” he demanded. “Like inferior movies and books and plays, it’s simply not on our map.”

  “And like confidence games, and counterfeit money,” Leon jibed.

  “I know, Leon, but after all—”

  “But after all,” I intervened, “it’s noon, and we’ve come around to ultimate values, right on the dot.”

  Roy looked around, smiling. “Well, if you have something, don’t let it spoil.”

  “I think maybe I have,” I said. “A little idea that might do everyone a certain amount of good, ourselves included. It’s about Futureways. We all know something of what they’re doing downstairs.”

  “Those alchemists,” said Roy. “Do they know, themselves?”

  “I have a strong feeling they’ve lost their way with Funded Individuals,” I began. “We could do a double service by featuring it ourselves, at the same time sending up a trial balloon for them.”

  I elaborated. In theory, Funded Individuals was something big. The substance of it was the capitalization of gifted people in their younger years for an amount sufficient to rear them under controlled conditions, educate them, and then provide for a substantial investment in some profitable enterprise through which the original indebtedness would be repaid. The original loan, floated as ordinary stocks or bonds, also paid life-insurance premiums guaranteeing the full amount of the issue, and a normal yearly dividend.