The Skeleton in the Clock shm-18

by John Dickson Carr

  From some forty yards down the drive, there appeared the conspicuous sleeve of a grey-and-black checked suit (Martin had seen that sleeve before, near the race-track booth.) A hand waved. Then, startlingly, the hand held high a square card bearing the large number 7.

  Jenny's finger, on the typewritten sheet, found the number 7 and indicated to Martin, opposite the words Mirror Maze.

  "That's Mr. MacDougall" she said rapidly. "For some reason he thinks H.M. is wonderful. He thinks H.M. was born to the show business. Martin! Wait! Just a moment!"

  Martin scarcely heard Jenny's last words as he ran.

  Outside the front door, a still-rising breeze swept his face. The sky was overcast, though it did not look like rain. Empty bags of potato-crisps danced past, and a small girl's hat

  "This, ladies and gentlemen," Martin could remember a voice through a loud-speaker, though he did not hear it amid the blatter now, "is the Mirror Maze. Biggest and finest attraction of MacDougall's Mammoth. The Mirror Maze. If you are unable—"

  It was half-past twelve. Though a fair number of people still cluttered round the attractions, most of the crowd had retired farther back to eat out of picnic boxes. They sat on the greensward, encamped like an army, with white napkin-cloths and glinting thermos-flasks. As for music, only the band whooshed and boomed softly with Scottish airs. But in the drive, where Martin ran like hell, it was'different.

  "Get a fish, now! A wood-en fish, with a re-al hook, out of re-al running water. Each third fish contains a number a number, which—"

  "See how easy it is? Just throw the wooden ring, like this, over the peg!"

  "Come-on-Redjacket! Bill, turn that crank faster! Come-on-Redjacket for 'alf a crown!

  This was the place.

  Near the race-track, where the crowd bounced him round its edges like a roulette-ball, a wide space had been left between both lines of booths and stalls to form a sort of cross-avenue.

  Beyond the open space on his right set some hundred feet back, was the Mirror Maze. It stood alone; nothing anywhere near it except the Whip and the Dodgem.

  " 'Ave your try at the coconut-shy!" a voice was intoning, that of a little man who hopped from foot to foot under the spell of his own rhyming. "'Ave your try at the coconut-shy!’ An arm snapped forward; the wooden ball clacked against the coconut; the coconut toppled and fell. "That’s the stuff, sir. One — cigarette! 'Ave your try at the coconut-shy!"

  It jigged through Martin's head, like the little man jigging back and forth, as he turned off the drive and ran towards the Mirror Maze. The loud-speaker had been right in calling the Mirror Maze its biggest attraction.

  The structure was very large, circular in shape (odd, wasn’t that for a mirror maze?), and 'practical' in the sense that it had been built of very light wood painted dull silver. The words MIRROR MAZE stared at Martin in red letters.

  But there was nobody at the ticket-seller's place. Nobody to speak into the microphone of the loud-speaker. No visitors. Nobody at all. Over the door hung a curtain of black felt, a good deal heavier and thicker than the under-felt for carpets.

  The sky was growing darker, over a buzz and paper-crackle from an army at sandwich-eating. Some female singer, whose voice reminded Martin of Lady Brayle, had joined the brass-band and urged it to softness. Martin heard one line above the heavy lion-purr of the band:

  "Ma-o-a-x-wel-l-l-ton's braes are bo-o-n-n-ie—"

  Then he ducked past the mattressy black felt, became entangled in another black curtain, and twisted himself free from that.

  "H.M.?’ he shouted.

  Inside the circular structure was another structure: almost as large, but square and painted black. It had only one door, opening into a broad corridor, dimly lighted and lined with polished looking-glass.

  To Martin, as he crossed the threshold of the Mirror Maze, it seemed he was walking into a gigantic box-camera.

  "Oil H.M.! Where are your he called. But the shout seemed lifeless, flat, stifled, as he strode along the corridor.

  (I know it's an optical trick, but this corridor looks as long as something at Versailles. It isn't actually broad, either; I can touch each, side by stretching out my hands. Also, I can see the joinings down the mirrors. Of course the corridor's not long! Two turnings here.)

  Martin took one turning. He walked a dozen feet farther, and took another.

  "HM., don't try to play the fool! This is only a little place; you can't help hearing me. They know you're here!"

  Exasperated, Martin paused. He looked round with curiosity, and then with some feeling other than exasperation.

  He was the only living soul in this maze. Yet he was not alone. Everywhere he was pursued, surrounded, and furtively glanced at round corners, by images of himself.

  The dim yellow light, from some concealed source along the tops of the mirrors, turned the place into a shiny, shadowy labyrinth, all straight lines and right-angles, short passages and long, with one looking-glass occupant.

  Martin Drake, turning to one side, confronted himself: he looked, with the discoloured forehead, exactly like a pirate. He turned to the other, with the same result. He walked forward again, his footsteps clumping, to what seemed to be the junction of four passages. As he circled round, a whole band of pirates multiplied and circled with him.

  (All right If H.M. is up to some crafty game, let it be taken as done. I'm going to get out of here.)

  That would be easy, of course. He had only to remember where he came in, which must be comparatively close. But the fact was that he couldn't remember where he came in.

  Well, what of it?

  All that would be required of him, as Stannard had said, was a little logical reasoning. A sense of direction, too. Here— observe, now! — was the junction of what appeared to be four corridors. One of them looked like a dead-end. Martin edged in, leaching out his fingers to touch his own reflected fingers, and met the glass. Good! He'd established that.

  Now the other corridor, opposite, must be fully twenty feet long. It had a mirror there facing him; but a long corridor must have a turn at the side which (now he remembered!) was the direction he had come.

  Martin, heated with elation, took five strides forward. And..

  "God!”

  Out of nowhere, leaping, a foil-length mirror rushed at him and banged him full body and face.

  Only the sudden vision of his own eyes — appearing hideously magnified by their closeness — made an instinctive recoil and lessened the shock as he smacked full-tilt into his own reflection. What angered him was the real shock to the nerves it had given him in a childish place meant for amusement

  "Now let's consider this!" Martin said, unaware he was speaking aloud.

  "Looking-glasses can't suddenly move across in front of you. Any more than a lot of beach-chairs can rush at you and push you off a roof."

  That was a grisly thought. What brought such an idea into his head?

  "Therefore," he argued, and still aloud to all his ghost-selves, "there's an explanation. This mirror I ran into: it's the end of the passage I was trying to reach.

  "Got it! A mirror at the end of the passage gives a double length of reflection. You judge it by the floor. If it looks twenty feet away, it's actually only ten. I went tearing forward, like Grandmother Brayle, and as a result—!" He stopped.

  That was a sound, not from his imagination, clearly if very faintly heard, which registered with him. It was, 'Brayle,' or 'Lady Brayle.'

  Despite its layers of looking-glasses and its double roof, the Mammoth Mirror Maze was not exactly soundproof. Nobody could mistake the slowly gathering roar from a little distance away, to Martin's heighted senses carrying a note of anger; the shouts; the heavy drumming of crowd-feet across open grass.

  The old girl had returned.

  She must have returned, he reflected, almost as soon as he himself had dived into this place. She had started raising hell at the main gates, and must have got some way up the drive with her riding-crop before…


  Well, he'd got to get out of this place. Martin tried again.

  What drives a man frantic, even under the most ordinary circumstances, is that he cannot make speed even when he refrains from making haste. The more he says it to himself— slowly, slowly, no haste or you'll fumble — the more matters become snarled. The clock-hand crawls; the chance is lost

  "If you are unable to get out of the Mirror Maze," Martin's memory brought back the words from the loud-speaker, "directions will be given by—"

  Given by whom? Given how? He had heard no more.

  Martin, trying to keep from a run and holding out his hands against obstacles, hurried always into a dead-end. His watch kept, ticking steadily, tiny digs of urgency. If only he hadn't come in here alone..

  But he was not alone in the maze.

  He discovered this as he whipped round the angle of a corridor, and stopped dead.

  This corridor (his eye, used to it now, could judge accurately) was twenty feet long. Ahead of him, back to Martin, walked a man in a brown coat and blue trousers.

  A grey soft hat was pulled down on the back of the man's head, concealing even the neck. In the dim light, in the secret silvery cavern, no details could be seen. And, though the man wore heavy boots and walked heavily, he made not a sound. All this went through Martin's head while the man took three steps.

  "Hoy! There! Wait a minute!"

  Martin ran forward. The air itself took form against him. His outstretched hands thumped into an invisible barrier which jarred him to the shoulder-bones and stopped him in his tracks.

  It was a polished sheet of thick plate-glass: invisible, stretching across the whole corridor and cutting it in two. No wonder the man's steps had made no sound!

  Martin, his hands against the glass, stood there for a moment and tried to think straight This wasn't a predicament: it was merely damned ludicrous. He was not in the Cretan labyrinth, or even in Pentecost Prison. He was in a trumpery two-by-four pavilion at a country fair, and yet as excited as though…

  Whereupon, although the corridor was empty except for, Martin, a voice spoke. The voice had a note of slyness; It was not loud; it even whispered. The voice said:

  "You had better leave, Mr. Drake. If you can."

  Chapter 19

  About a quarter of an hour before that voice spoke to Martin, there was at Brayle Manor a scene far more — wrenched with emotion, far deeper in the springs of human life.

  Sophia, Dowager Countess of Brayle, almost staggered as she moved up the broad oak staircase in the dim house. Her fashionable hat was disarranged on the grey-white hair. The fashionable dress, also a little disarranged, did not now conceal her stoutness. From the limp fingers of one hand dangled a riding-crop. Nevertheless, most noticeable of all was the look of utter stupefaction in her eyes.

  Lady Brayle stumbled a little on the top step. She went over to the octagonal room, whose oriel window faced the drive, and opened the door.

  In the window-seat, his back to the leaded panes. Sir Henry Merrivale sat smoking a cigar. Chief Inspector Masters stood beside him. Jenny, at the other side of the window, looked at the floor.

  Lady Brayle groped for and found a chair. She sat down heavily. She drew her breath heavily through her heavy body. For a few seconds she stared at the carpet, and then looked up.

  They cheered me," she said.

  Her tone was one of incredulity, though perhaps she had not meant it as such. It was that of one half-waking from hypnosis. They cheered me!" she repeated. Nobody else spoke.

  Lady Brayle seemed vaguely to notice the riding-crop in her hand. As though nobody else in the room knew what happened, she went on.

  "I — that is, Mr. Barnham was kind enough to send me over in a car. An open car. With a driver. I gripped this in my hand. From some distance away one of the wr-wretches saw the car coming, and ran to tell his fellow — other people. As we swung in at the gates I stood up and gripped this. For I could hear them roaring. But…

  "They were lined up on each side of the drive and beyond. Heaven knows how many of them. Some waved balloons, and some waved Union Jacks. They were shouting and cheering for me. Then, I believe, some wr-wretched band struck up. They began to sing."

  It was unnecessary to tell her listeners, even if they did not know. For at that moment, beyond the oriel window, the band struck up with the same tune and the voices-joined again,

  "For she's a jolly good fel-low, For she's a jolly good fellow, For she's…"

  Out it rolled, one repetition after another, over the ancient oak-trees of Brayle Manor. Lady Brayle put her hands over her face.

  "Sophie," growled H.M., taking the cigar out of his mouth, "you come to this window and wave your hand at 'em. Don't say anything, or I'll wring your neck. Just wave."

  "Henry, you fiend!" said Lady Brayle.

  "Uh-huh. But you do what I tell you."

  Lady Brayle got up, shaking and adjusting her shoulders, and moved over to the window. Beyond the sky showed dull, almost lead-coloured, with the red geraniums in their flowerpots against it Lady Brayle lifted her arm in the manner of one unaccustomed to do so.

  When she returned to her chair, after the tumult subsided, she was still half-dazed.

  "As — as the car went up the drive," she said, "I confess I was stunned. I… I could only make some response, as a matter of courtesy, by waving this.

  "At the terrace mere were calls for 'speech.' This, naturally, was a duty I could fulfil admirably. I was about to do so, when my attention was attracted by a revolting noise from that window there. I looked up, and saw projecting from the window a quite horrible face, which I discerned to be Henry's. He was holding a flower-pot.

  "He informed me (pray forgive me for repeating such words) that, if I were to speak one word of what I had intended to speak, he would drop the goddam flower-pot on what he described as my onion.

  "The fiend told me to do only what he called my routine, which I have always considered somewhat graceful. It consists in calling for three cheers, and taking two steps backwards while raising my hand. I… I confess that the volume of the cheering: I never heard it before."

  Lady Brayle thought for a while. Then her mood changed.

  This is pure sentimentality,'‘ she said abruptly, and whacked down the riding-crop on the table, where she left it "How very amusing! The cheers of a vulgar mob!"

  "Sure," agreed H.M. "We know you're above all that" He contemplated the glowing tip of the cigar, he frowned down at his big shoes, and looked up again. "But don't you find it just a bit comfortin’, Sophie, now that you and I are old?"

  There was a pause. Then Lady Brayle heaved herself to her feet

  She went over to the little writing-desk, with her back to them. While the others pretended not to notice, she removed a hat disarranged from (mere) feelings, straightened her dress, repaired her face while peering into the mirror of a compact and shut up her handbag with a decisive snap. ' When she returned to the chair, and sat down with dignity and grimness, she was herself again.

  "And now, Henry," she suggested briskly, "shall we have this matter out between us to a finish?"

  "Grandmother!" cried Jenny.

  But again two strong personalities, with a sort of silent blare, faced each other.

  "Sophie," H.M. said mildly, "don't tangle with me again. I'm just warning you."

  " Tangle with' is an expression I have heard before. It is a vulgarism, probably transatlantic. But I will make you pay for your childishness, believe me."

  "Uh-huh?" said H.M.

  "First of all I will admit that an error of judgment on my part admitted this revolting display," she nodded towards the booths and stalls outside, "under the impression that it was a simple rustic fair, and…"

  "Oh, Sophie," groaned H.M., taking the cigar out of his mouth. "You knew smacking well what kind of show it was, or you wouldn't have had correspondence and signed a contract on MacDougall's Mammoth letter-paper. You wanted money; who's blamin' you? But
you're spinnin' this little piece of hoo-ha, for your friends, about how you've been taken in."

  Jenny, really shocked, uttered an exclamation and sat up straight Her grandmother regarded her with mild surprise.

  "You find this strange, Jennifer?''

  "I don't care," Jenny told her with a sort of loathing, "whether you go out in the street with a tin cup and a dancing bear. But why must you be hypocritical about it?"

  "One has one's responsibilities, Jennifer. I fear you would not understand that"

  "For years," cried Jenny, "you've been saying you would do this, and you would do that, but you wouldn't stoop to tell lies.’'

  "And I never do," replied Lady Brayle, quite sincerely believing every word she said, "except when I consider it just As, for instance, telling your friend Captain Drake you had gone to London instead of Ranham Old Park."

  Then she whipped round to H.M.. coolly.

  "But a fair in Rupert's Five-Acre is one thing. A detestable display on the approach to Brayle is quite another. When I heard of it Henry, I was quite prepared to use this riding-crop on the vulgar."

  "Sure, Sophie. I know that What's more," said H.M., with a shadow of huge and ghoulish pleasure on his face, "you're goin' to get another beautiful surprise when you look out your bedroom window."

  "And you," pounced Lady Brayle, "were responsible. I shall sue—"

  "By the way, Sophie, what are they payin' you? The show's here for a week; you bargained for that. What are they payin' you by the day?"

  "I believe," answered Lady Brayle, lifting one shoulder with an air of indifference, "it is the beggarly sum of ten pounds."

  "Well… no. As a matter of fact you're gettin' sixty."

  "Sixty pounds a day?"

  "That's right And fifty per cent of the car-park profits. I had to do some swift work on that first part; but here it is." He fumbled inside his breast pocket and took out a cheque. 'This is MacDougall's first of the week's rent D'ye want it or shall I turn it back to him?’'