“Yes, I did; and I’m afraid I suspected that Gus had helped himself to a bit.”
“You were right,” said Kennet. “He cut a piece off and pocketed it. But before he cut it off, he made two impressions of the key on it. I saw him. He thought I didn’t, because my back was turned to him. But I was working on that level, and I was able to watch him in the mirror.”
I didn’t much like this, and said so.
“More don’t I,” said Kennet. “I haven’t said anything about it, because it ain’t my concern. But it may be yours. So you keep a lookout. And remember that I saw him do it.”
With this and a significant nod he went back to the lathe and resumed his work.
The hardly-veiled hint that “it might be my concern” was not very comfortable to reflect on, but there was nothing to be done beyond keeping my tool-bag locked and the key in my pocket, which I was careful to do; and as the weeks passed, and nothing unusual happened, the affair gradually faded out of my mind.
Meanwhile, conditions were steadily improving. I had now learned to use the lathe and even to cut a quite respectable screw, and, as my proficiency in creased, and with it my value as a workman, I began to feel my position more secure. And even when there was nothing for me to do in the workshop, Mr. Parrish found me odd jobs about the house, repairing locks, cleaning his watch, and attending to the various clocks, so that I was still earning my modest wage. In this way I came by a piece of work which interested me immensely at the time and which had such curious consequences later that I venture to describe it in some detail.
It was connected with a long-case, or “grandfather” clock, which stood in Mr. Parrish’s workroom a few feet from his writing-table. I suspect that it had not been cleaned within the memory of man, and, naturally, there came a time when dirt and dry pivots brought it to a standstill. Even then, a touch of oil would probably have kept it going for a month or two, but I made no such suggestion. I agreed emphatically with Mr. Parrish’s pronouncement that the clock needed a thorough overhaul.
“And while you’ve got it to pieces,” he continued, “perhaps you could manage to fit it with a calendar attachment. Do you think that would be possible?”
I pointed out that it had a date disc, but he dismissed that with contempt.
“Too small. Want a microscope to see it. No, no, I mean a proper calendar with the day of the week and the day of the month in good bold characters that I can read when I am sitting at the table. Can you do that?”
I suggested that the striking work would be rather in the way, but he interrupted: “Never mind the striking work. I never use it. I hate a jangling noise in my room. Take it off if it’s in the way. But I should like a calendar if you could manage it.”
Of course, there was no difficulty. A modification of the ordinary watch-calendar movement would have answered. But when I described it, he raised objections.
“How long does it take to change?” he asked.
“About half an hour, I should think. It changes during the night.”
“That’s no use,” said he. “The date changes in an instant, on the stroke of midnight. A minute to twelve is, say, Monday; a minute after twelve is Tuesday. That ought to be possible. You make a clock strike at the right moment; why couldn’t you do the same with a calendar? It must be possible.”
It probably was; but no calendar movement known to me would do it. I should have to invent one on an entirely different principle if my powers were equal to the task. It was certainly a problem; but the very difficulty of it was an attraction, and in the end I promised to turn it over in my mind, and meanwhile I proceeded to take the clock out of its case and bear it away to the workshop. There, under the respectful observation of Gus and Mr. Kennet, I quickly took it down and fell to work on the cleaning operations; but the familiar routine hardly occupied my attention. As I worked, my thoughts were busy with the problem that I had to solve, and gradually my ideas began to take a definite shape. I saw, at once, that the mechanism required must be in the nature of an escapement; that is to say, that there must be a constant drive and a periodical release. I must not burden the reader with mechanical details, but it is necessary that I should give an outline of the arrangement at which I arrived after much thought and a few tentative pencil drawings.
Close to the top of the door of the case I cut two small windows, one to show the date numbers and the other the days of the week. Below these was a third window for the months, the names of which were painted in white on a band of black linen which travelled on a pair of small rollers. But these rollers were turned by hand and formed no part of the mechanism. There was no use in complicating the arrangements for the sake of a monthly change.
And now for the mechanism itself! The names of the days were painted in white on a black drum, or roller, three inches in diameter, and the date numbers were painted on an endless black ribbon which was carried by another drum of the same thickness but narrower. This drum had at each edge seven little pins, or pegs; and the ribbon had, along each edge, a series of small eyelet holes which fitted loosely on the pins, so that, as the drum turned, it carried the ribbon along for exactly the right distance. Both drums were fixed friction-tight on a long spindle, which also carried at its middle a star wheel with seven long, slender teeth, and at its end a ratchet pulley over which ran a cord carrying the small driving-weight. Thus the calendar movement had its own driving-power and made no demands on that of the clock.
So much for the calendar itself; and now for its connection with the clock. The mechanism “took off” from the hour-wheel which carries the hour-hand and makes a complete turn in twelve hours, and which, in this clock, had forty teeth. Below this, and gearing with it, I fixed another wheel, which had eighty teeth, and consequently turned once in twenty-four hours. I will call this “the day-wheel.” On this wheel I fixed, friction-tight, so that it could be moved round to adjust it, what clockmakers call a “snail,” which is a flat disc cut to a spiral shape, so that it looks like the profile of a snail’s shell. Connecting the snail with the calendar was a flat, thin steel bar (I actually made it from the blade of a hack saw) which I will call” the pallet-bar.” It moved on a pivot near its middle and had at its top end a small pin which rested against the edge of the snail and was pressed against it by a very weak spring. At its lower end it had an oblong opening with two small ledges, or pallets, for the teeth of the star-wheel to rest on. I hope I have made this fairly clear. And now let us see how it worked.
We will take the top end first. As the clock “went,” it turned the snail round slowly (half as fast as the hour-hand); and as the snail turned, it gradually pushed the pin of the pallet-bar, which was resting against it, farther and farther from its centre, until the end of the spiral was reached. A little further turn and the pin dropped off the end of the spiral (“the step”) down towards the centre. Then the pushing-away movement began again. Thus it will be seen that the rotation of the snail (once in twenty-four hours) caused the top end of the pallet-bar to move slowly outwards and then drop back with a jerk.
Now let us turn to the lower end of the pallet-bar. Here, as I have said, was an oblong opening, interrupted by two little projecting ledges, or pallets. Through this opening the star-wheel projected, one of its seven teeth resting (usually) on the upper pallet, and held there by the power of the little driving weight. As the snail turned and pushed the top end of the pallet-bar outwards, the lower end moved in the opposite directtion, and the pallet slid along under the tooth of the wheel. When the tooth reached the end of the upper pallet, it dropped off on to the lower pallet and remained there for a few minutes. Then, when the pin dropped into the step of the snail, the lower pallet was suddenly withdrawn from under the tooth, which left the wheel free to turn until the next tooth was stopped by the upper pallet. Thus the wheel made the seventh of a revolution; but so, also, did the two drums which were on the same spindle, with the result that a new day and date number were brought to their respective windows; an
d the change occupied less than a second.
The above is only a rough sketch of the mechanism, omitting the minor mechanical details, and I hope it has not wearied the reader. To me, I need not say, the work was a labour of love which kept me supremely happy. But it also greatly added to my prestige in the workshop. Kennet was deeply impressed by it, and Gus followed the construction with the keenest interest and with a display of mechanical intelligence that rather surprised me. Even Mr. Parrish looked into the workshop from time to time and observed my progress with an approving grunt.
When the construction was finished, I brought the case into the workshop and there set the clock up—at first without the dial—to make the final adjustments. I set the snail to discharge at twelve noon, as midnight was not practicable, and the three of us used to gather round the clock as the appointed hour approached, for the gratification of seeing the day and date change in an instant at the little windows. When the adjustment was perfect, I stopped the clock at ten in the morning and we carried it in triumph to its usual abiding place, where, when I had tried the action to see that the tick was even, I once more stopped the pendulum and would have left it to the care of its owner. But Mr. Parrish insisted that I should come in in the evening and start it myself and further, that I should stay until midnight and see that the date did actually change at the correct moment. To which I agreed very readily; whereby I not only gained a supper that was a banquet compared with my customary diet and had the satisfaction of seeing the date change on the very stroke of midnight, but I received such commendations from my usually undemonstrative employer that I began seriously to consider the possibility of an increase in my wages in the not too distant future.
But, alas! the future had something very different in store for me.
CHAPTER VIII
Mr. Parrish Remembers
For a month or two after the agreeable episode just recounted, the stream of my life flowed on tranquilly and perhaps rather monotonously. But I was quite happy. My position in Mr. Parrish’s establishment seemed fairly settled and I had the feeling that my employer set some value on me as a workman. Not, however, to the extent of increasing my salary, though of this I still cherished hopes. But I did not dare to raise the question; for at least I had an assured livelihood, if a rather meagre one, and so great was my horror of being thrown out of employment that I would have accepted the low wage indefinitely rather than risk my security. So I worked on contentedly, poor as a church mouse, but always hoping for better times.
But at last came the explosion which blew my security into atoms. It was a disastrous affair and foolish, too; and what made it worse was that it was my own hand that set the match to the gunpowder. Very vividly do I recall the circumstances, though, at first, they seemed trivial enough. A man from a tool-maker’s had come into the workshop to inspect a new slide-rest that his firm had fitted to the lathe. When he had examined it and pronounced it satisfactory, he picked up the heavy bag that he had brought and was turning towards the door when Mr. Parrish said:
“If you have got the account with you, I may as well settle up now.”
The man produced the account from his pocket-book and handed it to Mr. Parrish, who glanced at it and then, diving into his coat-tail pocket, brought out a leather wallet (which I instantly recognized as an old acquaintance) and, extracting from it a five-pound note, handed the latter to the man in exchange for the receipt and a few shillings change. As our visitor put away the note, Mr. Parrish said to me: “Take Mr. Soames’s bag, Polton, and carry it out to the cab.”
I picked up the bag, which seemed to be filled with tool-makers’ samples, and conveyed it out to the waiting “growler,” where I stowed it on the front seat, and, waiting with the door open, saw Mr. Soames safely into the vehicle and shut him in. Returning into the house, I encountered Mr. Parrish, who was standing at the front door; and then it was that some demon of mischief impelled me to an act of the most perfectly asinine folly.
“I see, sir,” I said with a fatuous smirk, “that you still carry your wallet in your coat-tail pocket.”
He halted suddenly and stared at me with a strange, startled expression that brought me to my senses with a jerk. But it was too late. I saw that the fat was in the fire, though I didn’t guess how much fat there was or how big was the fire. After a prolonged stare, he commanded, gruffly:
“Come into my room and tell me what you mean.” I followed him in, miserably, and when he had shut the door, I explained:
“I was thinking, sir, of what the inspector at the police station said to you about carrying your wallet in your tail pocket. Don’t you remember, sir?”
“Yes,” he replied, glaring at me ferociously, “I remember. And I remember you, too, now that you have reminded me. I always thought that I had seen you before. So you are the young rascal who was found in possession of the stolen property.”
“But I didn’t steal it, sir,” I pleaded.
“Ha!” said he. “So you said at the time. Very well. That will do for the present.”
I sneaked out of the room very crest-fallen and apprehensive. “For the present!” What did he mean by that? Was there more trouble to come? I looked nervously in at the workshop, but as the other occupants had now gone to dinner, I took myself off and repaired to an a-la-mode beef shop in Oxford Market, where I fortified myself with a big basinful of the steaming compound and “topped up” with a halfpennyworth of apples from a stall in the market. Then I whiled away the remainder of the dinner hour rambling about the streets, trying to interest myself in shop windows, but unable to rid myself of the haunting dread of what loomed in the immediate future.
At length, as the last minutes of the dinner hour ran out, I crept back timorously, hoping to slink unnoticed along the passage to the workshop. But even as I entered, my forebodings were realized. For there was my employer, evidently waiting for me, and a glance at his face prepared me for instant dismissal. He motioned to me silently to follow him into his room, and I did so in the deepest dejection; but when I entered and found a third person in the room, my dejection gave place to something like terror. For that third person was Detective Sergeant Pitts.
He recognized me instantly, for he greeted me drily by name. Then, characteristically, he came straight to the point.
“Mr. Parrish alleges that you have opened his cash drawer with a false key and have, from time to time, taken certain monies from it. Now, before you say any thing, I must caution you that anything you may say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence against you. So be very careful. Do you wish to say anything?”
“Certainly I do,” I replied, my indignation almost overcoming my alarm. “I say that I have no false key, that I have never touched the drawer except in Mr. Parrish’s presence, and that I have never taken any money whatsoever.”
The sergeant made a note of my reply in a large black notebook and then asked: “Is it true that you made a key to fit this drawer?”
“Yes, for Mr. Parrish; and he has that key and the broken one from which it was copied. I made no other key.”
“How did you make that key? By measurements only, or did you make a squeeze?”
“I made a squeeze from the broken key, and, as soon as the job was finished, I destroyed it.”
“That’s what he says,” exclaimed Mr. Parrish, “but it’s a lie. He kept the squeeze and made another key from it.”
The sergeant cast a slightly impatient glance at him and remarked, drily: “We are taking his statement,” and continued:
“Now, Polton, Mr. Parrish says that he marked some, or all, of the money in that drawer with a P scratched just behind the head. If you have got any money about you, perhaps you would like to show it to us.”
“Like, indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Parrish. “He’ll have to be searched whether he likes it or not.”
The sergeant looked at him angrily, but, as I proceeded to turn out my pockets and lay the contents on the table, he made no remark until Mr. Pa
rrish was about to pounce on the coins that I had laid down, when he said, brusquely: “Keep your hands off that money, Mr. Parrish. This is my affair.”
Then he proceeded to examine the coins, one by one, laying them down again in two separate groups. Having finished, he looked at me steadily and said:
“Here, Polton, are five coins: three half-crowns and a shilling and a sixpence. All the half-crowns are marked with a P. The other coins are not marked. Can you explain how you came by those half-crowns?”
“Yes, sir. I received them from Mr. Parrish when he paid me my wages last Saturday. He gave me four half-crowns, two forms and a shilling; and he took the money from that drawer.”
The sergeant looked at Mr. Parrish. “Is that correct?” he asked.
“I paid him his wages—fifteen shillings—but I don’t admit that those are the coins I gave him.”
“But,” the sergeant persisted, “did you take the money from that drawer?”
“Of course I did,” snapped Parrish. “It’s my petty-cash drawer.”
“And did you examine the coins to see whether they were marked?”
“I expect I did, but I really don’t remember.”
“He did not,” said I. “He just counted out the money and handed it to me.”
The sergeant gazed at my employer with an expression of bewilderment.
“Well, of all—” he began, and then stopped and began again: “But what on earth was the use of marking the money and then paying it out in the ordinary way?”
The question stumped Mr. Parrish for the moment. Then, having mumbled something about “a simple precaution,” he returned to the subject of the squeeze and the key. But the sergeant cut him short.
“It’s no use just making accusations without proof. You’ve got nothing to go on. The marked money is all bunkum, and as to the key, you are simply guessing. You’ve not made out any case at all.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 249