The House with a Clock In Its Walls (16 page)

Lewis had stopped crying, and now he turned around to look. A full minute passed. Then the front door scraped open and Mrs. Zimmermann appeared. She walked calmly down the steps and down the brick walk and out into the street, humming as she went. The orange fires in the creases of her robe had gone out, and so had the magic footlights. In one hand she held an old umbrella. The handle of the umbrella was a crystal knob, and a tiny seed of violet fire still burned in it. In her other hand Mrs. Zimmermann held Jonathan’s cane; its globe was still dark.

“Hi, Florence,” said Jonathan, as if he were meeting her on the street on a Sunday afternoon. “How did it go?”

“Well enough,” she said, handing him his cane. “Here’s your magic wand. It’s had quite a shock, but I think it’ll recover. As for Mrs. Izard, I just don’t know. I may have destroyed her, or I may have just put her out of action for a while. In any case, let’s take the time that has been given to us and
find that clock!
”

When the three of them got back to the house, they had a shock. The ticking was very loud now, louder than it had ever been. It was like standing inside the works of Big Ben.

Jonathan turned pale. “It looks,” he said, “as if things are drawing to some conclusion. Mrs. Izard may not be as dead as we could wish.”

Mrs. Zimmermann began to pace back and forth. She rubbed the purple stone of her ring against her chin. “She may be, or she may not be. Either way, having her out of the way is no guarantee that the bomb won’t blow up in our faces,” she said. “But let’s assume the worst. Let’s assume that she’s still in the game. All right.” She
took a deep breath and let it out. “It has been my theory, ever since yesterday, that the old hag is just waiting for the proper
time
to use that wretched key. The proper action at the proper time to achieve the proper effect. That would be like her. And like her old husband too. His magic is logical. It proceeds from A to B to C in nice, neat steps. As logical and neat as the movement of a hand around the face of a clock.”

“Then there’s no point in our being logical, is there?” said Jonathan. He was smiling very strangely and clicking the paper clips on his watch chain. This was always a sign that he was thinking.

“What do you mean?” said Lewis and Mrs. Zimmermann at the same time.

“I mean,” he said patiently, “that we’re no good at that sort of game. Our game is wild swoops, sudden inexplicable discoveries, cloudy thinking. Knights’ jumps instead of files of rooks plowing across the board. So we’d better play our way if we expect to win.”

Mrs. Zimmermann folded her arms and looked grumpy. “I see,” she said. “It sounds very reasonable. If you’re in a chess game, draw to an inside straight. If you’re playing tennis, try to hit a home run. Very intelligent.”

Jonathan seemed unruffled. “Why not?” he said. “It all seems clear enough to me. Lewis, what I want you to do is this. Get a pencil and paper, and dream up the silliest set of instructions you can think of.”

Lewis looked puzzled. “Instructions for what?”

“For a ceremony. A ritual. A magic show for getting the clock out of its hiding place. Make it as goofy as you can.”

Lewis felt very excited and happy. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want, here we go!”

He ran to the sideboard and dug out a yellow Ticonderoga
NO.
2 pencil and a five-cent pad of writing paper. Then he ran into the study and slammed the doors. Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann paced nervously outside, and the gigantic ticking continued.

Fifteen minutes later Lewis slid back the doors of the study. He handed Jonathan a blue-lined sheet of paper with writing on both sides. The first line that Jonathan read made him throw back his head and laugh loudly. He mumbled rapidly through the rest of the list, chuckling all the while. Mrs. Zimmermann kept trying to read it over his shoulder, but finally she lost her temper and snatched it out of his hand. She laughed even harder than Jonathan had. She snortled and cackled and giggled. Finally, she handed the paper back to Jonathan.

“Okay,” she said. “So be it. First we put lighted candles in all the windows. Real candles, that is.”

“Yes,” said Jonathan, wrinkling up his nose. “I see Lewis has the poor taste to prefer real candles. Ah, well . . . let’s get going. There are several boxes of candle ends in the sideboard.”

Jonathan took the first floor, Mrs. Zimmermann took
the second floor, and Lewis took the third floor and the stained-glass windows, wherever they might be. Before long, the whole house was lit up for Christmas in April.

Lewis paused outside the door of the room that had Isaac Izard’s organ in it. He looked into the shoe box that had been full of candle stubs. Only one left. Should he put it in there? No, there was a better place.

With a fat red candle in his hand, Lewis climbed the dusty spiral staircase that led to the cupola room. He shoved open the narrow door. The room was dark except for streaks of moonlight on the floor. Lewis moved over to the window. He knelt down and leaned forward into the deep embrasure.

The oval window gave him a bird’s-eye view of the Hanchett house. Or would have, if he had been able to see it. Brilliant moonlight bathed the hill, but the Hanchett house lay in a mass of shadow. Only the dark point of its roof could be seen.

Lewis stared, fascinated. Then, suddenly, he began to hear the ticking, faint but audible, that filled even this room in the house at 100 High Street. He shook his head, got out his matches, and quickly lit the candle.

When he got back downstairs, he found that his second instruction was being obeyed. Mrs. Zimmermann was playing “Chopsticks” on the organ in the front parlor. When she got up and went back to the dining room, the organ kept on playing “Chopsticks,” since it was a player
organ, and she had set it on “Infinite Replay.” The silly monotonous music almost drowned out the steady ticking—almost, but not quite.

Jonathan came bouncing in from the back bedrooms. His face was red, and he was breathing hard. “Okay,” he said. “What’s next?”

Mrs. Zimmermann picked up the paper and read in a solemn voice. “We are to play a game of Bon-Sour-One-Frank until the Ace of Nitwits appears.”

As unlikely as it may seem, Jonathan knew what Bon-Sour-One-Frank was. It was Lewis’s name for poker. The three of them had played a lot of poker since that first August evening, and Lewis had named the game for the inscription he thought he saw on the shiny brass one-franc pieces. When you called someone, you had to shout, “Bon Sour One Frank!” very loudly.

But Jonathan was puzzled about one detail. He turned to Lewis with a quizzical look on his face. “And what, may I ask, is the Ace of Nitwits?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me. I guess we’ll know when we find it.”

Out came the red box of coins. Out came the blue and gold cards. Jonathan lit his pipe and unbuttoned his vest till it was only held together by the chain of paper clips. He got his dusty old gray fedora out of the closet and parked it on the back of his head. This, he explained, was the proper poker-playing costume.

Jonathan shuffled and dealt. Shekels and guilders, ducats and florins, drachmas and didrachmas clattered over the table. At first the hands were ordinary. Pair of eights, nothing, kings and tens. Then people started getting six of a kind and cards with square-root signs and question marks all over them. Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann were not pulling any tricks. The strange cards appeared all by themselves. On they played, while the giant clock ticked and the organ played “Chopsticks” and the candles threw fruit and flower patterns or plain yellow splotches onto the gray moonlit grass outside.

It was after a half hour of playing that Lewis picked up a card and found that he was staring at the Ace of Nitwits. There it was. Instead of clubs or hearts, it had ears of corn and green peppers all over it. In the center was a dopey-looking man in a flat black hat called a mortarboard, the kind of hat that college professors wear to graduations. Ice cream was heaped up on the hat, and the professor was tasting it with his index finger.

Lewis showed the card around.

“Why so it is!” cried Jonathan. “The Ace of Nitwits! I’d recognize it anywhere. Now just what does
that
mean, Lewis?”

“It means you have to wear it stuck to your forehead with a piece of bubble gum. Here.” Lewis took out the piece he had been chewing and handed it to Uncle Jonathan.

“Thanks awfully,” said Jonathan. He squashed the card against his forehead. “Now what?”

“You get all done up and come down with the eight ball, like it says in the instructions.”

“Hm. Yes. Righty-ho, and all that sort of thing. See you, folks.”

Jonathan went upstairs. He stayed up there a long time, so long that the parlor organ broke into “Stars and Stripes Forever” out of pure boredom. Mrs. Zimmermann sat tapping her fingers on the table, while Lewis did what he always did when he was nervously waiting for somebody. He slapped the sides of his chair, rocked back and forth, and wiggled his right leg.

“Well, here I am!”

Mrs. Zimmermann and Lewis looked up. There at the head of the stairs stood Jonathan. He was wearing a cape made from a crazy quilt, and on his head was a flowered toaster cover Mrs. Zimmermann had made. The Ace of Nitwits was still glued to his forehead, and he bore in his hands a small, round, black object. As he started down the stairs, the organ played “Pomp and Circumstance,” but it soon got tired of that and switched to radio commercials:

To this solemn accompaniment, Jonathan advanced to the dining-room table and set down the black ball. It was one of those fortune-telling eight-balls, the kind you buy in dime stores. The ball was full of fluid, and when you shook it, ghostly white cards came floating up to the little window. There were only three of them:
YES, NO
, and
MAYBE
.

“Now what?” asked Jonathan.

“Ask it,” said Lewis.

“Ask it what?” Jonathan looked blank.

“The circumference of the moon, you bearded booby!” screamed Mrs. Zimmermann. “Where I left my hat after the Chicago World’s Fair! Now
think
a minute, Jonathan. What would you
want
to ask it?”

“Where the clock is?” asked Jonathan in a small voice.

A burst of rather mechanical applause came from the front room. It was the organ, smarting off as usual. Jonathan stuck his tongue out at it over his shoulder. Then he turned back to the table where the eight-ball lay.
Carefully, reverently, he picked it up. He held it like a microphone and talked into it.

“Where is the clock?”

The dark window stayed dark. Jonathan shook the ball till the liquid inside it foamed. “
Where is the clock?
” he shouted, and he repeated this question in Greek, Latin, French, German, and Middle-Kingdom Egyptian. Still no answer.

“Your French is terrible,” said Mrs. Zimmermann, grabbing the ball out of his hand. “Here . . . let me try.”

Holding the ball under a corner of her cloak as if she were protecting it from rain, Mrs. Zimmermann jabbered at it in Bengali, Finno-Ugric, Basque, Old High Norse, and Geez. She used all the commands for unlocking the secrets of specular stones that are favored by Regiomontanus, Albertus Magnus, and Count Cagliostro. Still nothing.

“Can I try?” asked Lewis. His voice was timid and weak.

Mrs. Zimmermann looked down at him. Perspiration was pouring along all the wrinkles of her face. Her eyes looked wild. “What did you say?”

“I wonder if I might try. I know I’m not a wizard or anything, but it
is
my ball. I bought it in Chicago and . . . ”

“Of course!” cried Mrs. Zimmermann, pounding the table with her fist. “Of
course!
What fools we are! Like
any magic object, it only responds to its owner. Here. But hurry!” She shoved the ball into his hands.

The ticking of the clock got softer, but it was faster now.

Lewis held the magic toy up before his face. His voice was calm and quiet. “Please tell us where the clock is,” he whispered.

There was motion inside the ball.
YES
drifted out of the void like a ghostly newspaper in a black wind. It passed by. So did
NO
and
MAYBE
. Finally, after several tense minutes, a card appeared bearing the words:
COAL PIT.

“It says coal pit.” Lewis’s voice was dull and lifeless now. He hung his head.

“May I see the ball?” said Jonathan softly. Lewis handed it to him.

Jonathan held the ball up to the light. He wrinkled his forehead, and the Ace of Nitwits fluttered away to the floor. “Yes, it certainly says ‘coal pit.’ Coal pit?
Coal pit?
What the devil does it mean by saying
that?
” Jonathan glowered at the shiny little ball. He was beginning to think it might be nice to dash the wretched thing against the mantelpiece.