Graphic. Punctuation
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Texts
Story to analyze
The Clock
I was staying with my aunt in Hampstead. There was another guest, whom I had never met before, a Mrs Caleb. She lived in Lewes and had been staying with my aunt for about a fortnight. Frankly, I disliked her. She was queer and secretive; underground, if you can use the expression, rather than underhand. And I could feel in my body that she did not like me.One summer day Mrs Caleb waylaid me in the hall, just as I was going out.
'I wonder,' she said, 'I wonder if you could do me a small favour. If you do have any time to spare in Lewes - only if you do - would you be so kind as to call at my house? I left a little travelling-clock there in the hurry of parting. If it's not in the drawing-room, it will be in my bedroom or in one of the maids' bedrooms. Would it be too much to ask? The house has been locked up for twelve days, but everything is in order. I have the keys here; the large one is for the garden gate, the small one for the front door.'
I could only accept, and she proceeded to tell me how I could find Ash Grove House.
'You will feel quite like a burglar,' she said. 'But mind, it's only if you have time to spare.'
I found Ash Grove without difficulty. It was a medium-sized red-brick house, standing by itself in a high walled garden that bounded a narrow lane. A flagged path led from the gate to the front door. The dining-room and drawing-room lay on either side of the hall and I looked round hurriedly for the clock. It was neither on the table nor mantelpiece. The rest of the furniture was carefully covered over with white dust-sheets. Then 1 went upstairs. I made a hurried search of the principal bedrooms. There was no sign of Mrs Caleb's clock. The impression that the house gave me - you know the sense of personality that a house conveys - was neither pleasing nor displeasing, but it was stuffy, stuffy from the absence of fresh air, with an additional stuffiness added, that seemed to come out from the hangings and quilts. The last door that I unlocked - (I should say that the doors of all the rooms were locked, and relocked by me after I had glanced inside them) -contained the object of my search. Mrs Caleb's travelling-clock was on the mantelpiece, ticking away merrily.
That was how I thought of it at first. And then for the first time I realised that there was something wrong. The clock had no business to be ticking. The house had been shut up for twelve days. No one had come in to air it or to light fires. And yet the clock was going. I wondered if some vibration had set the mechanism in motion, and pulled out my watch to see the time. It was five minutes to one. The clock on the mantelpiece said four minutes to one. I again looked round the room. Nothing was out of place. The only thing that might have called for remark was that there appeared to be a slight indentation on the pillow and the bed; but the mattress was a feather mattress, and you know how difficult it is to make them perfectly smooth. I gave a hurried glance under the bed and then, and much more reluctantly, opened the doors of two horribly capacious cupboards, both happily empty. By this time I really was frightened. The clock went ticking on. I had a horrible feeling that an alarm might go off at any moment, and the thought of being in that empty house was almost too much for me. However, I made an attempt to pull myself together. It might after all be a fourteen-day clock. If it were, then it would be almost run down. I could roughly find out how long the clock had been going by winding it up. I hesitated to put the matter to the test; but the uncertainty was too much for me. I took it out of its case and began to wind. I had scarcely turned the winding-screw twice when it stopped. The clock clearly was not running down; the hands had been set in motion probably only an hour or two before. I felt cold and faint and, going to the window, threw up the sash, letting in the sweet, live air of the garden. I knew now that the house was queer, horribly queer. Could someone be living in the house? Was someone else in the house now? I thought that I had been in all the rooms, but had I? I had only just opened the bathroom door, and I had certainly not opened any cupboards, except those in the room in which I was. Then, as I stood by the open window, wondering what I should do next and and feeling that I just couldn't go down that corridor into the darkened hall to fumble at the latch of the front door with I don't know what behind me, I heard a noise. It was very faint at first, and seemed to be coming from the stairs. It was a curious noise - not the noise of anyone climbing up the stairs, but of something hopping up the stairs, like a very big bird would hop. I heard it on the landing; it stopped. Then there was a curious scratching noise against one of the bedroom doors, the sort of noise you can make with the nail of your little finger scratching polished wood. Whatever it was, was coming slowly down the corridor, scratching at the doors as it went. I could stand it no longer.
Nightmare pictures of locked doors opening filled my brain. I took up the clock wrapped it in my mackintosh and dropped it put of the window on to a flower-bed. Then I managed to crawl out of the window and, getting a grip of the sill, 'successfully negotiated', as the journalists would say, 'a twelve-foot drop'. Picking up the mackintosh, I ran round to the front door and locked it. Then I felt I could breathe, but not until I was on the far side of the gate in the garden wall did I feel safe.
Then I remembered that the bedroom window was open. What was I to do? Wild horses wouldn't have dragged me into that house again unaccompanied. I made up my mind to go to the police-station and tell them everything. I had actually begun to walk down the lane in the direction of the town, when I chanced to look back at the house. The window that I had left open was shut.
No, my dear, I didn't see any face or anything dreadful like that... and of course, it may have shut by itself. It was an ordinary sash-window, and you know they are often, difficult to keep open.
And the rest? Why, there's really nothing more to tell. I didn't even see Mrs Caleb again. She had had some sort îf fainting fit just before lunch-time, my aunt informed me on my return, and had had to go to bed. Next morning I travelled down to Cornwall to join mother and the children. I thought I had forgotten all about it, but when three years later Uncle Charles suggested giving me a travelling-clock for a twenty-first birthday present, I was foolish enough to prefer the alternative that he offered, a collected edition îf the works of Thomas Carlyle.
