The Alarming Clock

by Michael Avallone

  He laughed like a kid who’s just made a great catch for his team.

  “Forget it, Ed. I got something more important to tell you. I was really busy today. This detective stuff gets in your blood. Maybe, it’s ’cause I know you but after you and the dame took off this morning—”

  I wasn’t tired any more. In his slow, rambling way, I knew Benny was about to say something really important. I tensed.

  “Benny, you got me on pins and needles—”

  “Hell, Ed—” He sounded a little disgusted with himself. “I thought you might have left a trail in your office so when the other barman came in, I went up to your office—”

  “Benny—” I didn’t dare ask the question.

  “Oh, Ed.” He sighed. “I took that dingus down from where you hid it. I got the clock. It’s right here in front of me now. Still runs. Can you hear it?”

  Yeah, I heard it all right. I heard something else too. Heard my heart actually leapfrog over a few of my ribs. But my silence worried Benny.

  “Ed, I was only trying to help. Those FBI guys you were in here with last night were talking about a clock. You were talking about a clock. So I figured it was valuable. Is it? I kinda thought you might want me to hang on to it seeing as how everybody was busting into your place—”

  “Benny, I love you. I love your bar.”

  Benny still sounded apologetic. “So I was poking around and I looked and I saw this black shape-like shining down behind the glass. That’s how I spotted it in the first place.” Benny and Ray Milland. “You still there, Ed?”

  “Look, Benny,” I forced myself to speak calmly. “Right now, this second, as soon as you hang up, take that clock and bring it up here on the double. Even if you have to lock up the joint, understand? That’s how important it is.”

  “Ed, I sure hope I did the right thing—”

  “On my word and honour, you never did a righter thing. Now hang up and if you aren’t up here in less than five minutes, I’ll think something happened to you. Come on, Benny. I’m waiting.”

  He hung up and I stared at the phone feeling like I wanted to shout, dance on the top of the desk, sing my head off. I was just like the condemned man with the rope around his lily-white who sees somebody ride up on a horse waving the pardon for everybody to see.

  I had the clock again. And Alec was just down the hall. And with a little luck, the day wouldn’t die without my finding out what made the clock so alarming.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was only about five minutes but it seemed like a century before Benny knocked on the door and pushed into my office. I greeted him like a long lost brother. For some reason, he still felt a little silly about his precautions.

  “Geez, Ed,” he rumbled as he set the clock down on the desk. “You’re sure makin’ a character outa me. Maybe you oughta sign me on the payroll or somethin’.”

  I laughed and clapped him on his beefy back. “Benny, you are as much a part of this office as the phone and the desk. Take my word for it. I couldn’t run my business without you.”

  He watched me with open interest. I was turning the clock around in my fingers, studying it closely.

  “How important is that dingus, Ed?”

  “Important enough, Benjamin. Mike Monks is coming at seven o’clock to find out why. But I’d like to find out for myself first. All the headaches I’ve had these last two days—murder, getting beat over the head twice and it doesn’t look like I’ll make a nickel out of this caper. Hell, if there’s money in it for me, I’m going to find out just how much and where.”

  Benny heaved a sigh. “You won’t change. Even if you did make a million, you’d still like this crazy racket. You’re smart, Ed. Real smart. But you’re loco too, you know it? Why can’t you go into some nice business like real estate or—”

  “Not today, Benny. Please.” I smiled at him. “Look, it’s like some guy being in love with a no-good dame that he knows is no-good. But that doesn’t stop him being in love with her. Even if he knows she’s no good for him and means nothing but blood, sweat and tears for the rest of his days. Get the picture? Well that’s me and this business and I can’t help myself.”

  He sighed again, good old Benny did. But he rubbed his hands wearily on his apron and took his leave of me mumbling something about getting back to his bar. I watched him go with mingled feelings of affection and relief. I was itching to do something about the clock in my fingers.

  I did it. I left the office and hurried down the hall to the Watch Hospital. Luckily, Alec’s lights were still on. I tapped softly, heard him call out sleepily, and went in.

  He was still up, sprawled tiredly behind his work desk, a half-smoked cigarette spiralling away in an ash tray. He looked beat but I got the impression that he’d gotten his second wind and just couldn’t sleep. That made me feel better about bothering him. After all, he’d been through plenty.

  “Got some business for you, St. Peter,” I said, setting the clock down on the padded velvet in front of him.

  He was really awake now. He rocked forward in his chair. “Don’t tell me that’s—”

  “It is. An angel named Benny who also tends bar just came down from Heaven with it. He’s been my Guardian angel for years and this was just another demonstration of his ability.”

  Alec’s hooks picked the clock up, scratched at its metal body experimentally. His eyes were shining now. Somehow I got the notion just then that he really liked clocks, that it just wasn’t the usual only-thing-I’m-good-at excuse for the business a guy happens to be in.

  Alec laughed. “What do we—break open a bottle of champagne to celebrate? This might change the shape of our future.”

  I tried to maintain my calm. “Break open the clock instead. And right now. Go, man—go!”

  He went. And this time I was just as fascinated as that mob had been back in that room in the Village when he had re-handed himself. Alec St. Peter, the clock magician, never had a greater one-man rooting section.

  He had the handles and the screws that fasten the back plate of the clock off in a jiffy, splitting the thing in half as neatly as you please. His hooks seemed to fly. What added to the performance was the delicacy of his movements, the almost loving lightness of his touch. Soon, a mass of springs and things gleamed like a handful of scattered diamonds under the bright glare of his work lamp.

  I felt part of the tension already. Because there wasn’t anything concealed in Roland Ritz’s legacy to my profession. No bit of paper or hidden object that might have meant what all the fuss was about. I lit a Camel nervously as Alec probed and poked with his hooks.

  “Clocks are like people, you know,” Alec was saying. “They stop functioning properly and you have to look inside them same way a doctor does when a person has something sick inside. Take this clock now, Ed. It’s cheap. Real cheap. Most of its working disorders would come from its basically inferior materials. Poor grade of metal, the housing isn’t the best kind. Just imagine what it would be like having a second-grade small intestine. You wouldn’t run properly either—”

  He sounded real intelligent now but I was still watching his expert hooks and what they were doing. But I was practically chewing my cigarette down to nothing.

  Suddenly, Alec stopped poking and looked up. I didn’t like the negative look of his eyes.

  “That’s it, Ed. There’s nothing here but what belongs. I’ve stripped it as far down as she’ll go and all I can see is the right number of springs and parts. You sure this is the right clock?”

  “It has to be.” I felt desperate. “It’s the one Roland Ritz left on my desk yesterday morning. The one Maxim couldn’t do anything with. The one I left in my office which Benny took for safekeeping and brought back just now. I’d know it anywhere. The damn thing’s been haunting me as it is. Have you tried everything, Alec? What else do you do with a clock?”

  He grinned up at me even though he was just as disappointed as I was.

  “Want to soak it in water to s
ee if it’s waterproof? Bounce it off the wall to see if it’s shockproof? I can tell you right now it’s not one of those things. This is a damn cheap make.”

  I worried my cigarette. Make. Make. The word hung in front of me asking me to do something about it.

  “Whose make is it?”

  “Lang-Hughes. Which is just like saying Made in Japan, Ed. That outfit just hasn’t got the proper materials.”

  I felt like a dead end. A real big make-no-mistake-about-it-dead end.

  “How about the serial number, Alec? You said once that things could be inscribed in clocks—”

  He was way ahead of me. Using something that looked like a jeweller’s glass, he crouched over the pieces and examined everyone of them minutely. I had smoked another cigarette when he was finished.

  He took the glass off and shook his head.

  “Had me there for a minute, Ed. I was thinking of secret messages and code stuff. But no luck. The pieces are as clean as a whistle.”

  “The serial number,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, that.” He poked again and came up with a long metal part I couldn’t recognize and held it under the light. “Here it is. Three-three-one-nine-five-seven-one-eight-zero-zero NM.”

  I copied it down on a scrap of paper and looked at it. 3319571800 NM. I scowled at Alec.

  “That’s kind of a long serial number. Isn’t it?”

  Alec was surprised that I was surprised.

  “Not at all. Depends on the manufacturer. Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I picked up the long piece of metal he had read the number off. “Is that the usual place for a serial number to be?”

  He laughed. “There is no usual place. Clock makers have their own secrets too. It’s a very jealous field.”

  I was stumped and disgusted but I put the slip of paper back in my pocket. “Well, put it back together again and I’ll give it to Monks. To hell with it. As long as we have the damn thing I guess it doesn’t matter one way or the other. But I’m beginning to feel a little silly. If Roland Ritz weren’t dead, I’d feel downright ridiculous.”

  Alec put the clock back in working order without further comment. Faster than he had taken it apart. I picked it up off his table almost regretfully.

  He was really done in now. His eyes were two dead coals and the flesh of his face was puffy from beatings and lack of sleep.

  “Better luck next time, Alec,” I said.

  Suddenly the two dead coals that were his eyes ignited with a flash. With a low whistle, he scooped something off his table.

  “Ed—hold on. Look. There’s an extra cog here—” I gaped without comprehension at the small watch cog that he was holding up in one of his metal hooks.”

  “I don’t get you, Alec.”

  His eyes were burning with new discovery.

  “Don’t you get it, Ed. An extra cog. The clock is all assembled again and it’s still running. But I must have left this out. A spare part. An unnecessary cog. Christ, Ed, this must be the gimmick you’re looking for—”

  I took it from him almost warily. Afraid to believe our luck. Could this be it? I didn’t know. The small cog in my hand looked like it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with national security, sudden death and big time espionage.

  “No mistake, Alec? You sure this came from that particular clock? Maybe it’s a left over item from some of your other work.”

  Alec’s scornful smile was a professional one.

  “No dice, Ed. Everything I fix goes out of here in working order. If that part were missing from something else I would have heard from a complaining customer by now. That’s it, I tell you.”

  I grinned. I should have known better. I closed my fist around the cog inescapably.

  “Go to sleep, little man. You’ve had a busy day.”

  He yawned. “How about you?”

  “I’m a dynamo,” I said. “Dynamos don’t need sleep. Just lubrication. I’ve got some in a desk drawer. See you, kid.”

  “So long, Ed. I hope that’s what you were looking for—”

  I turned his lights off for him before I left. I took the clock and the cog with me. The extra cog.

  I kept thinking about the numbers on the slip of paper in my pocket 3319571800NM. I’d already had it memorized. Not that it meant anything. Just my old camera eye showing itself off again.

  Back in the mouse auditorium, I put the clock back on the desk and raided the lower left drawer where I keep my private bar. The bottle was nearly empty but there was just enough in it to lubricate the dynamo I’d been talking about.

  I got my feet comfortable by throwing them up on the desk and settled back in my swivel. I tilted the bottle all the way. The whisky burned but it felt great going down.

  The extra cog. That was it. It had to be. The secret of the clock. The reason for this Wild West show of the past few days.

  I thought about it. Thought about it a lot. Maxim had talked about World Peace, Roland Ritz had been connected in some way with Security in Washington, D.C. And somehow Maxim and his little Elite Guard kept pushing into my brainwork refusing to get out of the way. And the face of Hitler with the trick moustache and his whole cockeyed programme of Tomorrow the World.

  Almost instinctively, I took the back plate off the clock, examined it and replaced the cog on a lug of metal that was grooved for it. I replaced the back plate.

  Your thoughts are all part of a chain that starts with one notion that rapidly hooks on to another that seems completely unrelated at first but really isn’t. I say that because the next thing I thought about was my Army Serial Number—32812608, then my Social Security rating, pretty soon my license plates and then right on down the line to my date of birth. That’s how it all started. Every code has a system you know. Like the Numbers Racket. I began doodling with a pencil on the scrap of paper I had written the clock’s number on.

  Funny thing, I had it almost immediately. It came as suddenly and as clearly as a light going on in a dark room. I wasn’t surprised even if I should have been. If I had had the number from the very beginning I wouldn’t have known in a month of summers what it was supposed to mean. But with everything that had happened, the number right under my nose could only refer to one thing.

  And I knew what that one thing was. And it scared me. Scared me out of all feelings of being safe in the good old U.S.A. Because Roland Ritz had been able to leave Washington, the heart of our National Defense, with such a deadly secret. Because Fairways and his men could get hold of important cards and pretend to be FBI men. Because of everything.

  I didn’t feel safe any more. Nobody was really.

  I made up my mind fast. I flung a look at my watch. It was six-thirty and Monks was probably on his way right now. Well, I was so scared I wasn’t going to wait for him any more. The rats might be working underground even at good old Headquarters so I knew what I had to do.

  I unhooked the phone on my desk and got the Waldorf on the line. When I got connected, I asked for Miss Wheeler’s room. I didn’t care whether she was sleepy or not.

  She wasn’t sleeping when I called. I guessed the excitement of the day still hadn’t worn off.

  “Ed,” she was surprised to hear from me so soon. “What’s wrong?”

  I spoke as seriously as I could so she wouldn’t think I was clowning around.

  “Look, honey. I’ll explain later. Are you dressed?”

  She laughed. “You’d never know me. I’m out of those rags and togged up in my best Government Gal outfit. Why?”

  “All I can tell you is you have to move fast. Now listen carefully. My car is in a parking lot close to the hotel. Kinney’s on Broadway. You can’t miss it. Get over there as fast as you can. Introduce yourself as a friend of mine. They have an extra set of my car keys. It’s a ’53 Buick. And get over here as fast as the law allows. I’ll be waiting for you in front of the building.”

  “Ed, I never heard you sound so dead serious. You okay?”

  “Nev
er better. But I’ll be scared spitless until you get here in that Buick.”

  “We going some place?”

  I grinned tightly into the receiver. “The George Washington Bridge, baby. We’re going to put that clock where nobody else will ever get it. Now stop yammering and hang up. Remember—Kinney’s, ’53 Buick and step on the gas. I’ll give you no more than thirty minutes.”

  “Here I come,” she said and hung up.

  I got organized. I scooped the clock up, rammed it into my pocket and headed for the door. At the last minute I thought of Monks. I hurried back to the desk, tore a scrap of stationery off the pad and scribbled a note for him:

  Meet me on George Washington Bridge. Come like the wind. May be trouble. Either way, there’ll be somebody for you to arrest. Maybe me.

  Ed.

  I propped the note up so he couldn’t miss it and vamoosed out of the office leaving the door unlocked. I was too impatient for the elevator. I flew down the stairs taking them two at a time. I didn’t want to be walled in anywhere any more. Any time. With what I had I wanted plenty of open air around me and plenty of witnesses.

  It was really getting dark outside now. Lights were going on all over town. I stationed myself in the doorway next to my building and lit a cigarette to help me wait for Alma.

  The thing in my pocket really had me now. I had to get rid of it to keep the lights on. To keep them from going out all over the world.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It took Alma exactly twenty-eight minutes. I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. Everybody looked suspicious and unfriendly and aware of me and the dynamite I had in my right side pocket until my bright blue Buick nosed down the block smoothly and halted easily before the entrance to my building.

  I didn’t waste any time. I shot away from the doorway I was holing up in and jerked the car door open.

  “Slide over, Wheeler. I’ll drive.”