Jupiter had phoned Harry Smith at his home that morning. As Harry had recently got his driver’s licence and could drive the old car that had belonged to his father, he had driven down to The Jones Salvage Yard at Rocky Beach to join them.
“Bob, give us your report,” Jupiter said. Bob had been the busiest of them all. That morning he had driven into Los Angeles with his father, who was a feature writer for a big Los Angeles newspaper. His father had introduced him to the man in charge of the records room, called “the morgue” in newspaper slang. Here were hundreds of filing cabinets containing clippings of all the stories that had been in the newspaper, arranged both by subject matter and by name of the person involved.
Bob’s job had been to look up first anything he could learn about Harry’s father, Ralph Smith, and his trial, then about A. Clock or Mr. Hadley, then about thefts of valuable paintings in general.
Bob was armed with a sheaf of notes. He had a lot of information to pass on to the others, but he made it as brief as possible.
There wasn’t much to tell about Ralph Smith’s trial that they didn’t know already. The evidence was circumstantial, but strong enough to convince the police that they had their man. They had tried to get Mr. Smith to admit he had been the art thief who had been operating around Hollywood and Los Angeles for some ten years, but Harry’s father had stoutly maintained his innocence.
“Some of the thefts happened while you were still living in San Francisco, didn’t they, Harry?” Bob asked.
“Yes, that’s right. We only moved down to Hollywood about six years ago,” Harry answered. “So you see, my dad has to be innocent. He couldn’t have been involved in any of those first thefts.”
“If the same ring was guilty all along, he couldn’t,” Jupiter put in. “Tell us about the series of art thefts in this city, Bob.”
Bob obliged. There had been at least a dozen major robberies of valuable paintings in the last ten years, approximately at the rate of one a year. As Mr. Hitchcock had said, many wealthy film actors and directors collected art, and they had some immensely valuable paintings in their homes. Naturally, these weren’t guarded as well as pictures in a museum would be. In every case the thieves had got in through a window or by picking the lock of a door, had cut the paintings out of their frames, and had vanished without leaving a trace.
“The police theory has been that these paintings were sold to wealthy South American collectors who would keep them hidden in their own private collections for their own enjoyment,” Bob said. “Valuable paintings are known to just about everybody in the art world, so they couldn’t have been sold legitimately. They must have been sold to people who wouldn’t ever show them.”
“And none of them were ever recovered?” Jupiter asked.
“None of them. Not until the three were found in Harry’s house,” Bob answered. He went on to tell them about the biggest theft, some two years before. Many rare paintings had been loaned to a gallery for a special exhibit. Before the exhibit even opened, the thieves had broken in and stolen five paintings, with a total value of half a million dollars.
“This wasn’t a record, though,” Bob added. “Not long ago someone cut out a door panel in an English museum and stole eight pictures valued at between four and eight million dollars. They were later recovered, but that’s the record for an art theft so far.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Pete. “That’s a lot of money for paintings.”
“Right,” Bob agreed. “Anyway a lot of very valuable art has been stolen in this city, so smoothly that the police have been baffled every time. Apparently they now believe that Harry’s father had a hand in most of the thefts, but they wouldn’t even have suspected him if he hadn’t been in the house trying to sell life insurance a few days before. So — ”
“Now wait a minute!” Harry burst out angrily. “I tell you my father didn’t do it. If you’re trying to say that just because he sold insurance and got around to a lot of big houses — ”
“Take it easy, Harry,” Jupiter said quietly. “We don’t believe your father did it. The question of how those pictures got under the linoleum in your kitchen is another mystery. We seem to have a lot of them. One: who stole the pictures? Two: how did they get where they were found? Three: why did Mr. Hadley, or Mr. Clock, which seems to be his real name, go on a trip and disappear? Four: where did the clock actually come from, and what does it mean?”
He touched the clock, which stood on the desk in front of him.
“This clock certainly means something,” he said. “Mr. Jeeters was mighty anxious to get it away from us yesterday. That means it has to be important somehow.”
“I’m sorry I told Mr. Jeeters about you and the clock,” Harry apologized. “But after you left he started asking me questions about you, and — well, he frightened my mother. So I told him you’d been there to ask about one of Mr. Hadley’s screaming clocks you had found, and that seemed to set him off. He grabbed your card away from me and left in a hurry.”
“Fortunately, Hans was here to render us assistance,” Jupiter said. “Tell me, Harry, has Mr. Jeeters acted suspiciously in any way while he’s been living in the house?”
“He wanders round the house a lot at night!” Harry blurted out. “He claims he’s a writer and can’t sleep. One night I heard him tapping on walls like he was hunting for something.”
“Mmmm.” Jupiter pinched his lip and looked thoughtful. “I have an idea, but it may be all wrong. Let’s get back to business. I don’t see how we can solve the art thefts if the police can’t. But we still have the mystery of the clock to investigate. We haven’t puzzled out where it came from yet. Let’s tackle that next.”
“What good will that do my father?” Harry flared up. “He’s in jail and you go around investigating an old clock!”
“We have to start someplace,” Jupiter told him. “We have several mysteries here and I think the clock is a link between them somehow.”
“Well, okay,” Harry grumbled. “But how can you trace the clock if it was thrown out in someone’s rubbish?”
“We have a message that was pasted on the bottom of it,” Jupiter said. He opened a secret drawer in the desk, used for keeping small objects safe, and took out the paper they had found with the clock. He read the message out loud again:
Dear Rex:
Ask Imogene.
Ask Gerald.
Ask Martha.
Then act! The result will surprise even you.
“I still say, who are these characters?” Pete said. “How can we ever locate them and what do we ask them if we find them?”
“One thing at a time,” Jupiter said. “It seems the message is addressed to Rex. So I deduce that the clock containing the message must have been sent to this Rex. Let’s locate Rex.”
“As Pete says, how?” Bob put in.
“We must be logical,” Jupiter said. “Rex must be a friend of Mr. Clock, or Mr. Hadley — let’s all call him Mr. Clock from now on for the sake of clarity. Anyway, Rex must be a friend to be addressed by his first name. Harry, did you bring Mr. Clock’s address book?”
“I couldn’t find one,” Harry said, beginning to get interested. “But I did find a list of people he used to send Christmas cards to, stuffed in the back of a drawer.”
He brought out a folded sheet of paper. Jupiter smoothed it out.
“Good,” he said. “Mr. Clock’s friends should be on a Christmas card list. There are about a hundred names here, and addresses too, all typed out. Now first let’s find Rex.”
“I see an Imogene, and two Geralds, and three Marthas,” Bob said. “But no Rex.”
“You’re right, no Rex,” Jupiter agreed.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Bob burst out. “Look, there’s a name, Walter King.”
“What about it?” Pete asked.
“King in Latin is Rex,” Bob said. “It might be a nickname for a man named King.”
“It sounds more like a dog to me,” Harry mumbled. But Jupiter was writing down the name of Walter King, and the address, on a card. “Very good deduction, Bob,” he said. “It’s our only lead, so we’ll have to try it. Now let’s see about Imogene, Gerald, and Martha. Here’s Miss Imogene Taylor, out in North Hollywood. Here are two Geralds, both over near Pasadena, and here are three Marthas, scattered around the city. There are four of us, so I propose we break up into two teams. Bob, you and Harry can be one team, as Harry has a car. Pete and I will be the other team and we’ll call Mr. Gelbert at the Rent-’n-Ride Auto Agency for the car.
“We’ll contact these people, see what we can learn, and get back here sometime this afternoon. Bob, you take Mr. King and Miss Imogene, since they both live in the same direction, and Pete and I will take the others.”
“But what’ll I ask them?” Bob inquired.
“Ask Mr. King if Mr. Clock sent him the clock, and whether he ever noticed the message on the bottom or did anything about it,” Jupiter suggested. “Also why he threw it away. You’d better take the clock along with you, to show him in case he’s forgotten.”
“Right,” Bob said. “What’ll I say to Miss Imogene?”
“Well, you could ask her if Mr. Clock left any message with her,” Jupe said. “Maybe you’ll need to show her the clock to convince her the message is intended for you.”
“All right, but suppose you need the clock to show to Gerald and Martha?”
“I’ll take along a clock that looks like the original,” Jupiter said. “Chances are we won’t have to show it, just mention it. However, we have several old clocks around the salvage yard that look enough like Mr. Clock’s.
“Well, is everything straight? If so, I suggest we get started. Bob and Harry, you two can go right away. Pete and I will have to wait for Worthington.”
“Wait a minute!” Pete said suddenly. “Jupe, you’re overlooking something very important. We can’t start out now.”
Jupiter blinked. “Why not?” he asked.
“Because,” Pete told him with a straight face, “it’s lunch-time.”
“We ought to be nearly there,” Bob said, scanning the street numbers as Harry drove his father’s old sedan through an attractive section of North Hollywood. “Yes, there’s Mr. King’s number.”
Harry parked the car and they both got out.
“Costs money to live out here,” Harry remarked as they walked up the curving stone walk to the house.
Bob nodded. He carried in his hand the zipper bag containing the screaming clock. He wondered if they would find it had really come from this house whose bell he was now ringing.
The door opened and a woman looked out at them. She was not young, and she seemed to be under a strain.
“Yes, what is it?” she asked. “If you’re collecting for the Boy Scouts, I already made a donation.”
“No, ma’am” Bob said politely. “I wondered if I could speak to Mr. King, please.”
“No you can’t. He’s ill. He’s been in the hospital for several months.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Bob said, thinking hard. If Mr. King was in the hospital, he couldn’t very well have thrown away the clock. But he knew Jupe wouldn’t give up without trying further, so he asked another question.
“Is Mr. King’s nickname Rex, ma’am?”
The woman stared at him. Bob was perfectly polite and looked respectable; otherwise she looked as if she would have closed the door in his face.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Why in the world are you asking? If this is some kind of game — ”
“Oh, it isn’t a game,” Bob said hurriedly, “We’re investigating a clock, Mrs. King. I’ll show it to you.” He took the clock from the zipper bag and held it up. “I wonder if you have ever seen it before.”
“That horrible clock!” she cried. “Imagine sending such a thing to my husband, and when he was ill, too. If he’d ever heard it, it would have made him much worse. That dreadful scream!”
Bob and Harry exchanged quick glances. They had come to the right place, after all.
“Then Mr. Clock did send it to Mr. King?” Bob persisted.
“That horrible Bert Clock!” Mrs. King said indignantly. “Sending my husband a thing like that. Just because they used to work together years ago when my husband was writing a radio mystery show. Why, I plugged it in and set the alarm, never dreaming what it was, and when it went off that awful scream nearly gave me heart failure. I put it right into the rubbish and set it out for the refuse collector. Where on earth did you get it?”
“The refuse collector sold it to a friend of mine,” Bob said. “Did you notice the message on the bottom?”
“Message on the bottom?” The woman frowned. “I didn’t see any message. Of course, I got rid of the nasty thing the very next day. There was a short letter with it from Bert Clock, but I threw it away.”
“Can you possibly remember what it said?” Bob asked. “It’s really very important.”
“What it said? Oh, something about if my husband would listen to the clock and heed it well it might help mend his broken fortunes. Some nonsense. I think it was unpleasant of Bert Clock to play such a joke on my husband when he was ill and not working and worrying so much about the bills. They were very good friends once, too. I don’t know why Bert Clock would want to scare us out of our wits with one of his horrible screams.”
She paused, and frowned again.
“Why on earth do you want to know all this?” she asked. “Why are you interested in the clock?”
“We’re trying to learn all about it,” Bob said. “Mr. Clock has — well, he’s disappeared and we think the clock may be a clue or something. You didn’t notice where the clock was mailed from, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. That’s queer. Bert Clock disappeared. I wonder why — Oh, excuse me, I hear the telephone ringing. I’ve told you all I can, boys. Good-bye.”
The door closed. Bob turned to Harry.
“See how an investigation works, Harry?” he said. “We’ve already learned a lot. I don’t know what it all means, but even without Jupe I can tell that Mr. Clock sent this clock to Mr. King for a good reason. Only he never got it. He was sick in the hospital and his wife threw it away. Maybe Mr. King would have known what it meant, but we can’t see him, so we’ll have to figure it out for ourselves.”
“Gosh!” Harry was getting into the spirit of the investigation. “Now let’s try Miss Imogene Taylor. I wonder what she’ll be able to tell us?” As it turned out, Miss Taylor couldn’t tell them much. She was a little, bird-like woman who lived in a tiny house out in Woodland Hills, a few miles beyond North Hollywood. It was a small cottage almost hidden behind bushes and banana trees, and Miss Taylor, with her grey hair and her chirping voice, and her old-fashioned gold spectacles, looked as if she had stepped out of a fairy tale.
She invited them into a living-room so full of papers and magazines and fancy cushions that it looked as if she could never find anything in it. But when she heard Bob’s question about Mr. Clock and a message, she pushed her spectacles up on her forehead and started rummaging through her desk, talking all the time in little breathless chirps.
“My goodness!” she said. “Someone’s really come. For the message. I thought it was just a joke. One of Bert Clock’s jokes. He was a great practical joker in the studio. The radio studio, that is. When we were all doing radio shows. I lost track of him after that. Until the letter came. With a piece of paper in it. The letter said to give the message to anyone who came asking for it, especially if they mentioned a clock. Now where on earth did I put my glasses? I can’t see a thing without them.”