The Alarming Clock Read online

  “Max, Max—” I rebuked him as he stepped in flanked by a silent, stern-looking Fairways and my friend Otto with his Luger. I showed my teeth to Otto to remind him that I owed him a little something. Fairways’ two bright boys weren’t along this trip. Probably still tied up with that hot card game they’d had going. Or holding hands with the unusually agreeable Myra Colby. I didn’t know and I didn’t care at this particular moment.

  Alec didn’t care for the oil in Maxim’s voice. He flared up.

  “I wouldn’t give you the right time, you Red louse. Let alone fix a clock for you.”

  Fairways crinkled open a cigar wrapper and paused before stoking up his cigar.

  “Shut up,” he said coldly. “We’ll tell you what you’ll do and what you won’t.”

  “What’s that, Fairways old sock?” I asked sweetly. “We’ve decided to remain neutral. Haven’t we, boys and girls? You keep the clock and we’ll all go home. How’s that strike you?”

  “I’m all for it,” Alma chimed in, on cue again. “If this keeps up much longer, I’ll catch my death of cold.”

  Maxim made a face but controlled himself. He still reminded me of Tom, the banged-up cat with his comically bandaged wrist.

  “The clock divulges nothing Mr. Noon. Once again. But I don’t intend to make the same mistake twice. I don’t think you were so ridiculous as to bring along another of your cunning substitutes. So we shall make use of Mr. St. Peter here and his ready talent.”

  I threw back my head and laughed. Long and hard. Everybody looked at me as if I’d lost some marbles along the way.

  Maxim’s nostrils snorted like a horse’s and his mouth puckered.

  “You laugh too easily, Mr. Noon. A dangerous habit. Please tell us what is so amusing?”

  I sobered up like lightning and gave it to him fast.

  “Brutality always backfires, Max. So does indecency. You’ve lost more precious minutes. You heard Alec. He can’t do a thing without his artificial aids. Those hooks. The ones you were nice enough to strip him of when you messed up his happy existence this morning.”

  Maxim favoured me with what can only be described as tolerance, and a smile.

  “We’ve already made the required arrangement. Miss Colby has gone to secure them. You see how it is with men of training, Mr. Noon? We anticipate all difficulties and rush to overcome them.”

  I grinned.

  “I left the office door locked. And if you’ll remember, they were left in my office.”

  He grinned.

  “You’ll remember you were unconscious. We went through your pockets. Miss Colby will have no difficulty.”

  “Call her Myra,” I snapped. “Everyone else does.”

  His eyebrows tip-toed up his face. “What does that mean?”

  Fairways snickered in spite of himself midway between wetting the end of his thin, dappled cigar. Maxim frowned at him.

  Alec was getting more and more restless.

  “Okay. So you’ll give me back my hooks. But that doesn’t say you can make me help you with your damned clock.”

  “Now, Alec,” I cut in, catching his eye. “Don’t be like that. Help them with the clock and maybe they’ll let us go in gratitude.” I turned to Maxim. “Isn’t that so, Max?”

  He still didn’t know how to take me, dear old Max. But he pretended to just the same.

  “Of course, Mr. Noon. The clock is all we really want. You have my word on it.”

  “Thanks.” I heaved a theatrical sigh of relief. There’s nothing quite as reassuring as the word of a former SS man. “I knew you’d give us a square shake.”

  “Good,” he clucked in approval. “Well then, it’s settled. We shall withdraw and let me remind you not to attempt anything so foolish as an escape. Otto as you have seen will be in the hall. He is a fine shot. Come, Fairways.”

  Maxim seemed to bow as he made his goodbyes but Fairways just grunted and followed him out. Otto went with them. I wondered about Fairways. His FBI card had certainly looked genuine in Benny’s place. But I guess with enough money you can duplicate anything if you can afford to hire an expert forger.

  When they had finally thumped down the hall, I blew out some real relief. Alma and Alec gave me looks with question marks on either end.

  “Relax, team,” I said. “We just bought ourselves some extra time. Sit down and take it easy. We’ve got some fast figuring to do.”

  Alma nodded. But there was a wise squint in her sky blue eyes.

  “Come up with something extra special, Ed. When Max finds out you’re pulling his leg again, he’s going to be pretty sore.”

  “You said a mouthful, Wheeler,” I said.

  She had.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took maybe an hour. Maybe less. For Myra Colby to make her mad dash to my office, retrieve Alec St. Peter’s metal hands and come flying back. The minutes in between were rough. Plenty rough.

  Time is something you have all your life. Maybe you’re conscious of it, maybe you’re not. But the day does come when the hour and minute hands moving clockwise are awfully important to you. I mean whether or not they move fast or slow. Like those five minutes you spend waiting for the dentist to come out and say “Next” and you know he means you and not the guy who came in after you.

  An hour can seem like a lifetime or a split second depending on the situation. Which seems longer—the half hour your favourite blonde spends sitting in your lap or the five minutes you spend waiting for the crosstown bus to go see that same favourite blonde? You see, it all hangs on what things mean to you really. And what kind of a guy you are.

  Alec St. Peter put it the best of all of us. Alma had laughed nervously at one of my poorer attempts at a joke and a dead silence had followed. A silence so loud that the room seemed to vibrate with tension.

  Alec stomped a cigarette out.

  “Times like this I’m glad I got no hands. I’d be working my fingernails down to nothing.”

  Alma laughed again, less nervously.

  “I know what you mean. I’m on the second layer right now.”

  Me, I was nervous too. No Frank Merriwell, Ed Noon. My barrel of tricks was going to come to a screaming halt with Myra Colby’s return and Maxim’s belated discovery of my clock-changing trick. Hell, I could always fess up and give him the right one. But I knew as soon as I did, any further use for my being alive was gone. And that included Alma and Alec too. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. So I forgot it and thought about something else. Benny and car horns and license plates.

  Alec had an idea along those lines.

  “If this clock is a phony like you say, Ed—what can I stall them with?”

  He had me there. I shook my head.

  “Beats me. I don’t know. Hell, you’re the clock expert. Ever come across anything like this before?”

  Alec’s face was blank. But his eyes twinkled in the middle of his mauled features.

  “Something could be inscribed in a clock, you know,” he suggested. “Say on one of the metal parts. Maybe a code or a set of figures. Think maybe they’re looking for something like that?”

  “I don’t know what I mean, Alec. I’m still in the dark, believe me.”

  Alma had a notion.

  “Maybe Miss Colby will break her neck on the way to your office. She might get in a traffic accident.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Let’s not ask for the intervention of the gods. They’re busy enough already from what I hear.”

  “She’d have it coming, the bitch.” I was surprised. Alma had really put her teeth into the remark.

  “Wheeler,” I mocked. “You aren’t jealous, are you? That’s not like you.”

  “I can’t help it, Ed.” Alma was still too mad for repartee. “When a dame with all her opportunities does the back-stabbing routine, it gets you.”

  “Come again?”

  Alma was the one that was surprised now.

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t know who she is?”

 
; I smiled. “I plead extreme ignorance but I didn’t recognize Lana Turner either walking on Times Square. Who is she?”

  Alma folded her smooth arms and recited.

  “Myra Colby—Washington’s most famous young lady. A party giver for all the V.I.P.’s from here to Timbuctoo and back. Rich, beautiful, talented—she plays concert piano—her face is in all the smart society rags. She uses everything from Lifebuoy to Viceroys. She’s worth about two million bucks thanks to an old man who went out West and struck oil. No Washington clambake is complete without her. She gives tips to everybody from bellboys to Congressmen. The Grand Young Lady. That’s who Myra Colby is. But she’s still a bitch.”

  The news floored me but only slightly. The Reds always knew how to make love to Money. Capital was always Labour with the Commies. A labour of love. And a Washington butterfly like Myra Colby was just right for the net if a suave, polished mouthpiece like Maxim was holding it.

  “She looks the part,” I said. “But that’s what I love about the South.”

  “D.C.’s East but I know what you mean,” Alma agreed.

  But Alec St. Peter was thinking about other things.

  “What time is it, Ed?”

  I checked my watch. “Just about that time. She should be champing up to the front door any minute.”

  “Well, I wish the hell she’d get here,” he snapped. “This waiting around is getting me down.”

  I took a closer look at him. This Stalag 17 stuff wasn’t doing him too much good at all. His face was still a puffy, frightening mask but his eyes looked all right. Those are the really important items when you’re checking on anybody’s guts or sanity.

  I’d seen little of him the last few weeks. So little that I’d been trying to remember him as he’d been.

  He’d been one of those plain Joe faces you see all over town. In bars, on buses, at streetcorners waiting for the light to change, and buying tickets outside a movie house. You know, average face, nothing remarkably different about the eyes, ears, nose or mouth. The face in a crowd. Round-cheeked, square-jawed American puss that somehow never strikes you as anything but Joe Smith, American.

  Only his hooks had made him different. And he was without them now. That plus his battered kisser, I was hard put to really recognize him as Alec St. Peter, a handless vet who had a watch hospital on the same floor where I had my office.

  “Easy, kid,” I told him softly. “The referee’s up to nine, I’ll admit, but he hasn’t reached ten yet.”

  Alma shrewdly figured it was the right time to change the subject. “Who’s got the cigarettes?”

  My pack was almost kaput. The three I dealt out left me one lonely Camel. We lit up and looked at each other.

  We were still smoking when footsteps started to clump up the stairs in our direction. Outside where Otto was sitting on guard, I could hear him spring erect and the wooden legs of his chair grated in protest.

  They came in. All of them. Maxim, Fairways, Otto, and Myra Colby. All except the two card players and Maxim’s other strongarm boys.

  Maxim was carrying the clock. Carrying it like it was a coiled adder that might be ready to take a bite out of him.

  I didn’t like the level, mocking smile that Myra Colby had turned on me full blast. Her red mouth was showing all her wonderful teeth and her pink little tongue was travelling slowly back and forth.

  For one terrible second, I sweated out whether or not she had tumbled to the right clock which I had placed under the overheads just above the glass plate that shielded the glare. If she had, then the party was just beginning. Really beginning.

  There wasn’t time for any more flying guesses.

  Every inch in charge again, Maxim purred softly, “We begin again—”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Maxim walked to the table in the centre of the room and set the clock down as carefully as he might a baby. He twisted a small gooseneck utility lamp around so that its hooded head was in position directly above the clock. Almost dramatically, he clicked the light on. The clock lay exposed in the close electric glare. Cheap, tinny and expendable.

  I took a close look without moving and felt the relief wash over me. It was the same clock. The same phony clock.

  Myra Colby was carrying something too. Shiny metal parts caught the lights of the room and flung bits of reflected steel in all directions.

  Alec St. Peter’s eyes seemed to ignite like flares in the dark misery of his face. I could understand. I knew what those hooks meant to him.

  Alma huddled next to me and tried a smile. It just wouldn’t come off. She was staring at Myra Colby so hard I could see the hate pushing any attempt at humour right out of the way.

  Only Fairways seemed calm, cool and detached. Almost like a millionaire listening to his auditor reporting the accumulation of his ninety-ninth million. And of course. Otto was calm too. Good old Luger-bearing Otto.

  Myra Colby was tall, imperial and well-stacked but the excitement of the situation shone in her cheeks, the extra pinch of her sensual nostrils, the huff and puff of what crowded her bra. I couldn’t blame her exactly. What Washington clambake could compare to murder and clock riddles for entertainment?

  Maxim was breathing hard too. His eyes weren’t exactly normal either as he levelled them in my direction.

  “The last turn of the wheel, eh? Now we find out everything, Mr. Noon.”

  I forced myself to talk funny. I didn’t feel like it. But I forced myself to talk funny.

  “Max, you’ve hurt my feelings. You don’t trust me. Wait till they hear about this in Heidelberg.”

  He didn’t pay any attention to me.

  “Myra,” he said over his shoulder. “Give the young man his tools. I want to see just how expert he is.”

  Myra Colby took a step towards Alec, then suddenly realized he wouldn’t be able to take them from her and paused in confusion.

  But Alec laughed a short laugh, a laugh that can only be described as belonging to the talented handicapped and swept them out of her unresisting fingers by scooping them with the inner part of his left arm and pinning them to his side to hold them in position.

  For the twenty seconds or so that it took him to re-hand himself, nobody was looking anywhere but at him.

  It was some trick really. You had to see him do it to appreciate it. Maybe he’d done it five thousand times since he earned those hooks but just this once he never had a more spell-bound audience.

  Until you’ve seen a guy without hands put on a pair of steel, artificial ones without any help from the audience, you’ve never seen anything.

  None of them had either. Alec had shown me a few times but just this once for me too, it was like seeing it for the first time.

  You see, a shoulder harness goes with the hooks. The hooks really work off that because they are actually operated by the wearer’s shoulders and arm muscles. Alec was still wearing his harness and they had only disconnected the hooks when they had worked him over yesterday. He had nothing more to do than to set them back into working position. But it was quite a show anyway and when he stepped back triumphantly and swung them together in a business-like way the same manner a guy rubs his hands together, Houdini never left the customers more open-mouthed.

  Even dumb, ox-like Otto was impressed. The nose of the Luger in his hand was pointing more at the floor than at me. But he was still too far away from me that I could get cute about it.

  “Okay,” Alec snapped, his voice shooting off sparks. “Stand back and give me some room. I’ll crack that damn clock for you.”

  Then everything went fast. Deliciously, dazzlingly fast and all the numbers on the board kicked around to give everybody another chance at the wheel.

  Alec had moved forward and for one tick of the clock, no one else moved because the magic of his little early morning routine still held them all. Everyone of them except me who had seen some of it before.

  And Alec was between me and the only man in the room who was flashing any hardware.
Otto on the door.

  “HIT THE DIRT!” I roared.

  Alec went down like a shot. There isn’t a man alive who has spent time in the service who won’t do just that when the old familiar battle cry rams into his ear. It’s pure reflex to an ex-serviceman because it was drummed and drilled into his poor head from sun-up to sun-down. Because the Army had a funny idea that instant reaction to that command might save his life some day.

  For another tick of the clock, there was clear, uninterrupted space between me and the startled Otto where he was standing on door duty. Poor Otto still hadn’t quite figured what all the shouting was about.

  The alarm clock that they had wanted Alec to investigate for them left my hand with all the weight and swing of my shoulder behind it. I’d slowly closed my fingers around it during Alec’s one man show. And I wasn’t giving Otto enough time to bring his Luger back up let alone think it all out.

  It was a Bob Feller pitch. Hard and overhand. A perfect strike in anybody’s league. The hard round clock thudded off Otto’s heart like a cannon ball and something snapped in his chest. And he screamed in agony. And the Luger banged away into the floor alongside his feet.

  Myra Colby shrilled like a frightened bird, Maxim bellowed in German and Fairways, Alma and Alec all started moving at once. All in different directions as if they were members of a nudist colony and the place had just been raided.

  Which wasn’t far from the truth. Because the door downstairs fell in with a thunderclap of sound and a voice thundered in sweet, four-letter five cent American words:

  “THIS IS THE LAW! COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Coppers. Just like the song says—sometimes I love them, sometimes I hate them. Guess which time this was.

  “THE LAW.” Magic words. Words that will start any flock of citizens moving around looking for places to hide. The innocent and the guilty.

  Our little party was different, of course, but the party was getting out of hand again. And I was beginning to feel like one of those invited guests who keeps getting mixed up with the family skeletons. The guest who feels like he’d rather be in about five other places that he can think of.