The Clock Ticks On

Chapter 1 FIVE DAYs out from Southampton, the Megantic, nose to New York, forged her way carefully through placid seas. There was fog about, and from time to time the great ship’s siren sent its melancholy call booming through the June night. Dinner was an hour past: there was dancing in the big salon that evening and the men had the smoke-room to themselves. The air was clouded with the fumes of tobacco and vibrant with the desultory murmur of conversation. A group of four men, clustered about a corner table, was silent. One of them, a pursy individual with a bald head, eyes screwed up against the cigar stub he held between his teeth, was reading a novel; a scientific magazine engrossed the attention of the second, who faced him across the table; the third was playing patience; while, as for the bespectacled youth who made up the fourth member of the circle, he smoked his pipe reflectively, gazing before him into space. With a bang that set the cards dancing, the bald-headed man shut his book and slammed it down on the table. ‘Tripe!’ he vociferated disgustedly. The card-player glanced up from his patience. ‘Steady, Sir Alfred!’ he murmured banteringly. The other snorted. ‘Sorry, Reardon. But, really, the muck they publish nowadays! Great Scott, I could write a better crime story myself!’ He gazed about him for an audience and, perceiving that the youth with the pipe was regarding him with mild interest, immediately fixed upon him. ‘A big employer of labour like me,’ he pronounced pompously, ‘has to be able to read men, see? I— er— flatter myself I can detect ability at a glance— er— deduction, yer know. I employ something over fourteen-hundred hands’— he seemed to swell a little— ‘and I study ’em individjerly, see what I mean? I get reg’lar reports on my work-people, and if I spot a man or woman with brains, I promote ’em. If you were to talk to any of my friends in Birmingham, where I come from, they’d allow that Alf Wellow’s a pre-etty fair judge of people, I reckon. I’ve been at it that long I jes’ can’t help studying ’em. In the train, now, or in the Rolls driving to the works of a morning, I like to look at the folks and try and place ’em...’ He wagged his shining pate in self-approbation. ‘A rare good detective I’d have made...’ As this was obviously a monologue calling for no conversational activity on his part, the youth held his peace. ‘Take you, young Dene,’ Sir Alfred proceeded. ‘I’ve met you for the first time aboard this boat and I know nothing about you. Let’s see what I make of you...’ With a quick movement the young man removed his pipe and gazed rather hard at the speaker through his glasses. ‘You’re studious-looking,’ Sir Alfred went on, ‘and you wear what’s obv’ously a college tie. Yet I’d say you were too old to be still at college. A medical student, that’s what you are. Am I right?’ Dene laughed easily and replaced his pipe between his teeth. ‘I’m reading for the Bar, as a matter of fact,’ said he. Sir Alfred beamed. ‘You see? I wasn’t so fer out...’ Then, noticing that the man opposite had put aside his magazine and was listening, ‘I was just having a little experiment with our young friend here,’ he explained. ‘So I see,’ remarked the other. ‘I’d no idea you went in for that sort of thing, Sir Alfred...’ His tone was faintly sarcastic. ‘Oh, just in an amachoor way, Blain, just in an amachoor way,’ Sir Alfred conceded, a fatuous smile on his fat and glowing countenance. ‘Quite,’ said Blain bluntly, gazing round the smoke-room. He was a long-nosed man with a strident voice. ‘Let’s test you out. D’you see that fellow over there? The old boy in the grey suit— there, he’s just drinking a glass of water...’ Sir Alfred settled his pince-nez on his nose to examine the person indicated. ‘Ah,’ he commented. ‘A kindly, refined face. American, obv’ously. Quietly dressed: apparently neither drinks nor smokes...’ He took off his glasses. ‘Well, Blain, I’ll tell you. I’d judge him to be a social worker of some kind, perhaps a lay preacher...’ Blain cackled discordantly. ‘ “Social worker” is good. That’s Jack Finnegan, the con. man. He’s been working the boats for years. If you sit round here long enough, he’ll probably come over and offer to make your fortune!’ The patience player looked up from his game with a grin and even the stolid young man at Sir Alfred’s side relaxed into a smile. Sir Alfred cleared his throat. ‘That’s not a fair test...’ ‘Right-o,’ Blain retorted. ‘Try me. I’ve told you nothing about myself. What do I do for a living?’ Sir Alfred was silent for a moment, drawing on his cigar and studying him. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘you obv’ously belong to the professional classes. Yet I wouldn’t say that you were a doctor or a lawyer— you look to me more like a chap whose life is spent in the fresh air. And you read The Scientific American. I’d guess you were a civil or mining engineer...’ Blain shook his head. ‘Wrong. Anyone else like to have a shot?’ There were no takers. ‘I’m a vet.,’ he announced, with an undisguised air of triumph. ‘I spend my life travelling about the world gelding race-horses. Twice a year I go to the States. I’m on my way now to the Blue Grass country— Kentucky, you know.’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘Spotting people’s occupations isn’t as easy as you think, Sir Alfred...’ With a peevish air the other sliced his cigar ash into the match-stand. ‘Perhaps you can do better yourself,’ he suggested, and glanced about him. ‘Take Captain Reardon here. What does he do for a livelihood? Or has he told you?’ The card-player shifted a king and smiled. He was an attractive-looking man in the forties, exceedingly well-groomed, with a gardenia in the lapel of his evening coat. ‘D’you mind, Reardon?’ Sir Alfred asked. ‘Go ahead,’ said the other. ‘All I know about Captain Reardon,’ Blain observed, ‘is that he left the Army after the war and is going to New York on business...’ ‘What business?’ Sir Alfred demanded, with a malicious glance round the table. ‘Do you know?’ Blain enquired. ‘Certainly...’ The vet. hesitated. ‘Let’s see. I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t represent one of the big English luxury houses, motor-cars, or pipes, or perfumes...’ ‘Wrong!’ Sir Alfred proclaimed. ‘If it were polo ponies, I’d know him.’ Blain remarked. ‘He might be secretary of a club or something...’ ‘Wrong!’ the reply came again. Blain laughed and turned to the young man with the glasses. ‘Go on! You have a shot,’ he said. Dene laughed and shook his head. ‘Come on, young Dene!’ cried Sir Alfred, clapping him on the knee. ‘If you guess right, I’ll stand a round of drinks. Reardon don’t mind, do you, Reardon?’ ‘Go ahead,’ said the card-player as before. Dene shrugged his shoulders. ‘Captain Reardon’s obviously artistic,’ he pronounced. ‘I should say he’s an interior decorator or a designer, something like that...’ Reardon laughed and turned to his neighbour. ‘I’m afraid the drinks are on you, sir...’ ‘D’you mean to say he’s guessed right?’ Blain demanded. ‘Near enough,’ remarked Sir Alfred. ‘He’s in the antique business.’ He crooked his finger at a waiter. Blain turned to Dene. ‘Well, I’m blessed. How did you know?’ The young man shrugged. ‘He’s got artistic hands...’ Blain glanced across the table. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose he has. But how did you spot ’em?’ Dene took off his glasses and began to polish them on his handkerchief. ‘I dunno. I always look at people’s hands. You can learn a lot from hands...’ ‘But where did you get the interior-decorator notion?’ Blain enquired. ‘I happened to see him studying the frescoes in the big saloon,’ Dene explained. ‘He might have been an artist, mightn’t he?’ The young man shook his head. ‘Too well-dressed. Besides, he mentioned that he was going to the States on business. Artists don’t talk like that...’ Voices raised in heated argument were now audible from the table at the back of the group. ‘He had a fair trial, didn’t he?’ cried one, an unmistakably English voice. ‘I’m not saying he didn’t,’ was the retort in a nasal American accent. ‘I’m only pointing out that the evidence was purely circumstantial...’ ‘Circumstantial or not, they’ll hang him,’ the first speaker declared with considerable emphasis. ‘If you think you can transplant your damned gangster methods to England...’ Dene had turned his head in the direction of the altercation and was listening with his habitual non-committal air. A little stir brought his attention back to his own table. The men had risen to their feet. A pretty blonde American girl stood there. She wore a little jacket of white fur over her blue evening frock and clasped a backgammon board under one arm. ‘Please don’t get up, everybody,’ she begged rather breathlessly, and addressed Reardon. ‘Oh, Larry,’ she said, ‘Fay Montagu and Enid and George and the whole gang are down in Jack’s stateroom. Jack’s getting up a backgammon tournament and you’ve got to come along...’ Reardon swept the cards together. He moved round the table. ‘Count me out on the drinks, do you mind, sir?’ he told Sir Alfred. ‘I’m with you, honey,’ he said to the girl. With a faint blush on her pretty face, she was gazing ecstatically at the tall Englishman. Reardon smiled at her: He showed very white teeth when he smiled, and his eyes, smouldering blue under long, close lashes, twinkled. ‘Come on, Helen. We’ll clean those guys out,’ he exclaimed. Long-legged, leisurely, and debonair he took her arm and they went away together. A little Jewish man, round as a ball, was leaning forward to speak to Dene. It was Harry Solomons, the New York buyer, who sat next to him at meals. ‘It was just like I told you, boy,’ he pronounced solemnly. ‘We shall be late docking tomorrow, the Chief Officer says...’ ‘An infernal noosance,’ grumbled Sir Alfred, who had overheard the remark. ‘I’m expected in Chicago Sunday morning. The convention opens Monday and I’ve got to see that the newspapers get advance copies of my speech... How late are we going to be, do you know?’ he asked the buyer. ‘It depends on the fog lifting,’ Solomons replied. The wail of the ship’s siren cut across his words. Out of the shattering echoes of the foghorn’s warning, the disputing voices, heard before, emerged. A burly Briton with a flat provincial accent and a loud, hectoring manner was engaged in heated controversy with a plump, middle-aged American and his friend, likewise American, a short, aggressive individual. It was one of those bar-room discussions, interminable, digressive, in which no one is allowed to finish a sentence, everybody talks at once, and a faint aroma of whiskey hangs over all. ‘I’ll tell you why he won’t speak,’ vociferated the Englishman. ‘It’s because the police proved their case up to the hilt and he can’t say anything without giving himself away...’ ‘Without giving the higher-ups away, you mean,’ the short man put in. ‘I’m not saying a word against your Scotland Yard boys, but they can’t be expected to know the ways of these gunmen. Take the Becker case, fr’instance...’ ‘The way it looks to me and one or two Americans I’ve talked with,’ his plump friend interjected, ‘this bird Cloan or Atbury, or whatever he calls himself, is...’ ‘You’re darned right, Gus, darned right,’ the other American struck in. ‘What I mean to say is...’ ‘You can argue till you’re blue in the face,’ cried the Briton irascibly, ‘and you’ll never get away from the fact that Cloan killed the butler. You know damned well that Scotland Yard did a thundering smart piece of work: the trouble is you won’t admit it...’ ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute...’ objected the short man. ‘When they bumped off Rosenthal...’ his friend began. But the Englishman’s stentorian voice overtoned them. ‘What did the police have to go on? Nothing,’ he proclaimed. ‘No finger-prints and the safe unscratched. Yet in a week they’d nailed their man. Why, in America he’d never have been arrested, let alone brought to trial and convicted...’ ‘Just let me ask you one thing...’ the plump American was interposing when his friend stopped him. ‘Hold it, Gus, while he tells me this...’ He bent forward impressively towards the Englishman. ‘Did the police bring any evidence to show how he opened the safe? Will you answer me that?’ ‘You said yourself the case against Cloan was purely circumstantial,’ the Englishman countered irritably. ‘The Cartwrights thought the world of him. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright had the combination of the safe. Cloan could easily have got hold of it somewhere. After all, that was what he was there for, with faked references and all...’ ‘And how did he get into the house?’ the plump American broke in. ‘He lived out, didn’t he, over the garage?’ ‘He was in and out of the house all day,’ the Englishman retorted. ‘Used to valet Cartwright, didn’t he? He could have had a key made, left a window open or something...’ The plump man applied himself to his glass. ‘Well,’ said his friend, ‘I was reading in the ship’s paper where some Congressman was conferring with the American Embassy about the case...’ ‘A fat lot of good that’ll do Cloan,’ was the blunt answer. ‘The Home Secretary don’t dare grant a reprieve. Public opinion wouldn’t stand for it...’ A bell-boy tripped through the room. ‘Paging Mr. Baldwin,’ he chanted. The plump American rose hastily. ‘That’s my call from New York,’ he explained. ‘You coming along to say “Hello” to Edie, Joe?’ he said to his friend. ‘Okay, Gus,’ the latter replied. They hurried away. At the corner table a steward was serving the drinks Sir Alfred had ordered. Little Solomons declined to join the three men: he did his drinking by proxy, he explained. There was the murmur of staccato salutations. ‘Well,’ remarked Sir Alfred, setting down his glass and wiping his moustache, ‘our noisy friend is right. They’ll hang this chap Cloan if only to show people that you can’t shoot a man in England and get away with it...’ Blain nodded. ‘The old Daily Mail had a pretty stiff leader. They never got the stuff back, did they?’ Sir Alfred shook his head. ‘No. Fifty thousand quid-worth of diamonds. Pretty nice haul!’ ‘What case are they talking about?’ Solomons said to Dene. The young man was silent, staring in front of him and smoking his pipe. Blain answered for him. ‘It’s the Oldholme Priory jewel robbery,’ he explained, and, perceiving that the other’s face was a blank, added, ‘You must have read about it in the newspapers?’ ‘I’ve been travelling in France for the past two months,’ the buyer replied, ‘and I don’t read the French papers so good...’ Sir Alfred seized the opportunity to resume the direction of the conversation. ‘Some Americans called Cartwright took this place, ‘Oldholme Priory, for the summer,’ he informed his questioner. ‘They brought this man Atbury— his real name is Cloan, but he called himself Atbury— with them as chauffeur from New York. Mrs. Cartwright had a lot of valuable jewellery which they kept in a safe in the library. One morning— last April, I think it was— the butler was found shot dead beside the safe and the jewellery gone...’ ‘Seems to me I did hear something about it,’ Solomons put in. ‘The chauffeur was an ex-convict, wasn’t that it?’ ‘Yes. His real name is Gerry Cloan. He’d served a term in Sing Sing. One of these rum-running cases— he’d shot a policeman or something...’ ‘Pardon, Sir Alfred,’ Blain interposed. ‘It was Ed Cloan, the brother, who killed the policeman. Ed Cloan was never brought to justice. Gerry Cloan was only driving the car...’ ‘Anyway, his references were forged...’ ‘Not forged. Stolen,’ Blain corrected. ‘The real Atbury is a chauffeur in Detroit. He was robbed of his papers in a speakeasy. Gerry Cloan admitted that the papers weren’t his: said he’d bought them off a man when he found his prison record prevented him from getting work...’ ‘A pack of lies!’ Sir Alfred affirmed. ‘Why, he swore he was in bed and asleep at the time of the shooting until the police produced a witness who’d seen him hanging about the Priory Gates at two o’clock in the morning...’ ‘What settled Cloan’s hash, however, was the gun,’ Blain pronounced very positively; he seemed to delight in parading his knowledge of the case before Sir Alfred. He turned to Solomons: in the animation of their discussion the two men appeared to have overlooked the buyer, who was vainly trying to edge his way back into the conversation. ‘They found it in the reeds of a pond in the grounds,’ Blain explained to the buyer. ‘With a silencer attached,’ Sir Alfred interjected promptly. ‘That explained why no one heard the shot...’ Little Solomons nodded. ‘They don’t allow them to be sold at home any more...’ For the first time Dene, who had sat by smoking in stolid silence, spoke up. ‘Is that a fact?’ ‘Sure...’ ‘Nevertheless...’— Sir Alfred’s tone was triumphant— ‘I believe I’m right in saying’— he glanced at Blain— ‘that both gun and silencer bore the American maker’s name?’ ‘The gangs back home get hold of them, I guess,’ Solomons commented. ‘What does this egg say about it, anyway?’ ‘His system is to deny everything,’ Blain replied. ‘He declares he never saw the gun in his life and that he has never had a gun in his possession since he left America...’ ‘The old racket,’ observed the buyer cheerfully. ‘If they talk, they get bumped off by their pals, and if they don’t talk, they go to the chair. It’s one hell of a life, it seems to me...’ ‘A man at my club,’ Blain remarked, ‘knows Packett, who defended Cloan. Packett was in despair, he says: Cloan gave him no help whatever. There was this trip of Cloan’s to London, for instance, a week before the murder. The prisoner refused absolutely to say a word about it— it did him a lot of harm with the jury. The police never explained it, did they?’ he asked Sir Alfred. Sir Alfred assumed a mysterious air. ‘It was to arrange for the disposal of the diamonds, probably through an accomplice in touch with— er— a fence at Antwerp or Amsterdam. This is the police theory, at any rate. I was talking to our Chief Constable just before I sailed. He’d been up to town seeing the Yard about something or other and ran into Chief Inspector Manderton who’s been in charge of the case. Between ourselves, Manderton, who’s an old friend of his, told him that since times have been so hard on the other side a lot of American criminals have been operating over here...’ ‘One up to Old Man Depression,’ little Solomons observed humorously. A measured frown corrected this display of levity. ‘It seems there have been several big jewel robberies on the Continent in which American women were the victims,’ Sir Alfred proceeded, in his pompous way. ‘Safe robberies, like this one, see? There was one at Cannes and another, I believe, at Biarritz— Manderton thinks the women were followed from America, as in this case...’ ‘Organization, eh?’ said Blain. ‘Smart work all right,’ Sir Alfred agreed. ‘The French police were completely in the dark. The thieves got away and the jewellery was never recovered...’ ‘But you pulled in this guy over in England, didn’t you?’ the buyer asked. Sir Alfred puffed out his chest. ‘England ain’t the Continent, friend. Scotland Yard put their hands pre-etty promptly on the right man...’ ‘But not on the stuff, eh?’ ‘They’ll get back the stuff all right, don’t you worry. In the mean time, they charged Cloan at the assizes and he was sentenced to death...’ ‘They’ll hang him, that guy back there was saying?’ ‘You bet they’ll hang him. And the sooner the better...’ ‘Right off the bat like that?’ ‘Why not? The fellow’s guilty...’ Little Solomons shook his head. ‘Kinda tough luck...’ ‘Are you suggesting that the blackguard should be reprieved?’ Sir Alfred demanded, bristling. ‘I’ll say not,’ the buyer assured him heartily. ‘I was only thinking he’d have done better to have stayed home. With us he’d always have found a lawyer to keep stalling things along...’ ‘As a matter of fact,’ Blain now put in, ‘there’s a good chance of the execution being deferred. Packett told this friend of mine he was in hopes of getting the Home Secretary to review the whole case again, just as Joynson Hicks did in that Brighton murder, remember? The Home Office were calling for all the papers, he said...’ ‘Lot of tomfool nonsense,’ declared Sir Alfred. ‘I’d string him up first and give ’em the papers afterwards...’ ‘I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference in the long run,’ Blain proceeded. ‘But Packett said it would delay the execution for a week. If I were Gerry Cloan, I’d rather have it over and done with...’ Little Solomons shuddered. ‘Can’t you gentlemen talk of something else?’ he asked plaintively. ‘You sure give me the willies...’ Dene, who had apparently been sunk in a brown study during this desultory discussion, stood up abruptly. ‘What? Have you had enough, too?’ Solomons demanded jokingly. Dene laughed. ‘It’s a bit smoky in here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to get a mouthful of fresh air before I turn in...’ He nodded unconcernedly to the three men and, going to the door, passed out on deck.