Moving on to the first bar-parlour, on his right, Martin unlocked the front door there. This was a cosy room, its walls thickly hung with sporting prints and with quite genuine antique hunting horns of the early nineteenth century. Somewhat decaying leather chairs stood at the tables, and at either side of the black marble mantelpiece.
Then Martin turned round, and saw the skeleton in the clock.
The clock stood in the angle of the wall, south-east, beyond the mantelpiece. It was about six feet high, including its platform-base, and of dark polished wood elaborately wrought at the top. Through a round glass dial, with gilt numerals and hands, the skull-face looked out
And the clock was ticking.
No! Wait a minute! It couldn’t be ticking. The clock-case had another glass panel, oblong, so that you could see the skeleton behind a brass pendulum: which was motionless.
The illusion had been produced by a large square metal-cased clock, with a small pendulum, on the mantelpiece. Its slow tick-tick animated the hush of an atmosphere flavoured with the smell of beer and old stone. But the tall clock said nothing.
Yet it gave the watcher a slight start, the skull face a smug look in its dusky recess. Martin was conscious of golden shine lying through the windows behind him, of Fleet House across the road in its aloofness. He went over to examine the clock. As he had expected, the oblong lower panel opened on little hinges. He peered inside, he peered up.
With finewires, and a heavier wire drilled into the head, the skeleton had been fastened to the back of the case; its feet and ankles partly concealed by a wooden fitting evidently designed to help the upright position. The clock-hands, like the pendulum, were dummies held by screw and spindle. You could adjust them to any position you liked. The hands now stood at ten minutes past twelve.
Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.
Richard Fleet would be here at any moment
Martin drew back his head and closed the glass panel. How this reminder of mortality had got there he did not know. And it didn't matter.
He went through another door into the second bar-parlour. Dominated by a large iron stove rather than the usual fireplace, full of wicker chairs, this room was distinctly a comedown from the first Nevertheless, Martin unlocked its front door. He had just turned the key when distantly, from the saloon-bar two rooms away, that particular door opened.
A voice called, "Martin!” He heard light, quick, running footsteps in tennis-shoes. And in the doorway of the second parlour, breathing hard, stood Jenny.
She wore a white tennis-blouse and white shorts, with a light pullover thrown over her shoulders. With her yellow hair somewhat tumbled, the colour of exertion tinted her face to more than mere prettiness. He stared at her.
"How did you get here?"
"On my bike." Choking a little to get her breath, she made a gesture towards the outside of the inn. "Darling, why did you send that message about being an enemy?" " 'I had to get him here somehow."
"Grandmother was in the room when you rang up."
‘Yes. I thought she might be."
"You hadn't said three words to Dawson before grandmother said: That is Captain Drake, I suppose.’ Ricky said, 'Who's Captain Drake?' Grandmother said nothing at all. She just picked up her knitting and walked out of the room. Then I had to tell Ricky it was only a joke, but it war terribly serious. Afterwards I got old Riddle to insist the front tire of Ricky's car needed air — which it did — so I could get here before him."
"But you don't want to be present while we have it out, do you?"
Jenny's breathing was still quick. But the blue eyes regarded him steadily.
"If you want me. to," she answered, "I'll stay here. I promise that. But I don't want to. I don't want… oh, God, no!" She shuddered. "The trouble is, you see, that I've got to know what happens. Just as soon as it happens." Jenny spread out her hands. "I'm sorry. That's how I feel."
That's how a lot of us feel Jenny! Do you still—?"
This was when they heard the loud cranking of a motor-car, emphasized by a loose mud-guard, approaching and drawing up outside the south wing. Once more the door of the saloon-bar, after a tentative rattle at its knob, was opened. Martin motioned Jenny (confound this sense of guilt!) to go.out by the second-parlour door to the road.
"Hoy there!" called a male voice. "Hullo!"
Footsteps scuffled, hesitated, tramped through one room and then through two. In the doorway, inquiringly, appeared a tallish young man in sports coat flannels, and with a blue tie skewered under one wing of his soft collar.
His mop of dark-blond hair was uncombed and unruly. He was on the lean and muscular side, carrying himself well. But first of all you noticed the quality of good-humour, which was
so genome that it flowed from him and made friends immediately. His grey eyes, his bump of a chin, made it a strong face as well as a good-humoured face.
"Well," he said, "are you the enemy?"
"Yes." Martin could not help srniling back. "But not a personal enemy, if you follow me."
"Ah. That's good. Well, what's up?"
Selecting a wicker chair by the door into the first-parlour, the newcomer dropped into it and threw one leg over its arm. He began to fill a pipe from an oilskin pouch.
There was a long silence.
"Look here, old boy," expostulated Richard Fleet, who was fishing after a pocket-lighter. "Yes?"
"Stop pacing up and down like a Norman baron. Get it off your chest Spit it out You're making me nervous."
"All right" agreed Martin. "It's about Jenny. I've been in love with Jenny for more than three years, though I've only seen her twice. I have reason to think she feels the same way about me. I haven't formally asked her to marry me, but we intend to get married. I hate to tell you this, but there it is."
Again silence. Richard sat partly sideways, motionless, his leg over the chair-arm, pipe and lighter also held motionless, looking up at his companion. His grey eyes were without any shade of expression. Tick-tick, tick-tick went the clock in the other room, noticeable now as well as audible.
"I'm sorry to tell you this!" Martin shouted. "But…"
Then he saw that there was a shade of expression, slowly moving in like a new blood in Richard's face, though for a second he could not interpret it. It was tinged with incredulity, but this did not predominate. Then Martin realized. The feeling was relief. Slowly young Fleet sat upright and expelled his breath.
"Thank God!" he said.
Chapter 5
The words were so startling that Martin backed away until he bumped into the iron stove in the middle of the room. Richard Fleet hastened to correct any wrong impression he might have made.
"Mind!" he said, jumping to his feet and pointing with the pipe. "Jenny's the world's best. I'd do anything for her. I'm so fond of her that sometimes I've almost' thought this plan would work. “But—"
"But?'
"I grew-up with her," the other retorted with extraordinary intensity: "Jenny was always there, from five to seventeen and onwards. Let's face it: I'm not physically attracted by Jenny. Whereas you, it's plain, have gone completely overboard physically; and that's the main thing. Yes, I know!"
He held up a hand, forestalling objection. He dropped pipe and lighter into his pockets. The grey intelligent eyes regarded Martin as though they knew, or thought they knew, the whole universe.