The Mystery of the Screaming Clock - Arthur Robert. Страница 4

“They’ve killed somebody and now they have to bury him!”

“Hadn’t we better call the police?” Bob asked.

“Not yet,” Jupiter said. “We need more facts. We have to try to get into this house.”

“You mean break in?” Bob asked.

“No.” Jupe shook his head. “We have to get these people to let us in. I see Harry peeking through the window beside the door. I’m going to ring again.”

He rang, hard. The door flew open.

“I said to go away!” Harry shouted. “We don’t want anybody bothering us.”

“We don’t want to bother you,” Jupiter said quickly. “We’re investigating a mystery and we’d like your help. Look, here’s our business card.”

He whipped out one of the cards all three carried. Harry took it and looked at it. It said:

“What are the question marks for?” Harry sneered. “Do they mean you don’t know what you’re doing?”

“They stand for mysteries unsolved, riddles unanswered, puzzles of any kind,” Jupiter said. “Our motto is right there, ‘We Investigate Anything.’ Right now we’re investigating a very strange clock. See, here it is.”

He brought out the clock and handed it to Harry. Curiosity made the boy look it over.

“What’s so mysterious about it?” Harry demanded.

“We’ll demonstrate if you’ll let us use an electric socket,” Jupiter said.

He stepped forward as if certain that Harry would let him in. Harry stood aside and they entered a dark, narrow hallway, with stairs on one side going up to the second floor. On the other side was a big grandfather clock, going tick-tock, tick-tock. Beside the clock was a table with a telephone.

Bob and Pete peered around for the body of the mysterious Mr. Hadley, but they saw nothing. Jupiter spotted an electricity point beside the grandfather clock.

“I’ll just plug the clock in here,” he said, “and now I’ll switch on the alarm lever and — listen!”

The clock screamed again. Its eerie wail in the dark hall brought out goose-pimples on Pete and Bob.

“There” Jupiter said, unplugging the clock.

“Wouldn’t you say that’s a mysterious clock worth investigating?”

“Nope!” Harry answered rudely. “Anyone can make a clock scream. Listen and I’ll show you.”

He reached behind the grandfather clock and pulled out an electric cord. He plugged it in and their hair stood on end as a man’s deep voice rose in a scream, then faded away, as if he were falling over a high cliff.

The grandfather clock had screamed! This must be what they had heard over the telephone earlier.

The woman came hurrying out of a back room.

“Harry, for goodness sake, what — ” she began. Then she saw The Three Investigators. “Oh,” she said in confusion, “you let them in. What are you doing, Harry? What do they want here?”

“They have a screaming clock,” Harry said as he pulled out the electric cord. “A little one. I never saw it before but it must have been Mr. Hadley’s.”

He took the clock from the table and handed it to his mother. She shook her head.

“No, I never saw it before,” she said. “You’re sure it was Mr. Hadley’s?”

“Positive, Mom,” Harry said. “Nobody else would have a clock fixed so it would scream, would they?”

“No,” his mother shook her head. “I guess not. But where did these boys get it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Harry said, still sounding almost angry but more friendly than he had been. “They’re some kind of investigators and since they have one of Mr. Hadley’s clocks I figured I might as well see what they want.”

He opened a door and gestured for the three to go through it. They found themselves in a spacious library with panelled walls. On the walls were several framed oil paintings and at the other end of the room was a large mirror which reflected them and made the room seem bigger. There were shelves from floor to ceiling containing hundreds of books.

But what they noticed most were the clocks. There were a dozen or more of them in the room, some standing on the floor like the grandfather clock, others on tables and shelves. They all seemed old and valuable. Apparently they had all been electrified, as they didn’t tick, but merely hummed.

“You see those clocks?” Harry demanded. “Well, I’ll tell you something. Every one of them screams.”

5

The Room of Clocks

The room was screaming.

First it gave a high-pitched wail, like a frightened baby. Then it bellowed like a furiously angry man. Next it changed to a wild, animal-like cry which was the scream of a panther. Then from all sides came wails, screams, shrieks, bellows and animal snarls that blended into the most frightening sound any of the boys had ever heard. They sat side by side on a couch, cold chills running down their backs, and listened.

Harry sat at a desk, manipulating a set of switches to make the room scream. It was now apparent to The Three Investigators that all of the clocks in the room were equipped with screaming devices, probably similar to that in their alarm clock, and Harry was making them scream one by one and all together, with the ease of much practice.

He grinned at them, enjoying their amazement, and finally turned all the switches off, letting the room become silent.

“Bet you never heard anything like that before,” he said. “You can see why your clock didn’t mean anything to me. I’m used to clocks screaming.”

“Is this room soundproofed?” Jupiter asked. “If it isn’t, the neighbours will certainly be calling the police by now.”

“Of course it’s soundproofed,” Harry said loftily. “This is Mr. Hadley’s screaming room. He used to sit here at night and make all the clocks scream. He taught me how to do it before he — anyway, he taught me.”

“Did something happen to Mr. Hadley?” Jupiter asked.

“No, of course not. Why should it?” Harry flared up.

“You started to say, ‘before he — ’ then you stopped. I thought you might have been going to say something happened to him.”

“He went away, that’s all. What’s it to you, anyway?”

“We started out to investigate a screaming clock,” Jupiter said. “Now we’ve run into a whole roomful of screaming clocks. It seems to me we have a much bigger mystery. Why should anyone have so many clocks fixed so they could scream like people and animals? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll buy a double helping of that,” Pete agreed. “It’s about as wacky as anything I ever heard of.”

“It was Mr. Hadley’s hobby.” Harry was defensive now. “A hobby doesn’t have to make sense. He wanted a hobby nobody else had and he collected screaming clocks. What’s your hobby?” He shot the final question at Jupiter.

“Solving mysteries,” Jupe said. “Like this one.”

“I tell you there isn’t any mystery here!”

“Well, maybe there isn’t a mystery but something’s bothering you. You act as if you hate everybody. Why not tell us about it? Maybe we could help somehow.”

“How could you help?” Harry flared up. “I mean, there’s nothing bothering me. Except you guys. You’re bothering me. Now why don’t you get out and leave me alone.”

He ran to the door and opened it.

“This way out!” he said. “And don’t come back because — oh!” He broke off suddenly. The front door of the house had opened and a large man was coming in. He was not too tall, but he was very broad across the shoulders. He looked at Harry, then stared at the three boys. He scowled.

“What’s this, Harry?” he demanded. “You’ve brought friends in the house to play, to make a lot of noise, to upset me? You know I must have absolute quiet.”

“We aren’t making any noise, Mr. Jeeters,”

Harry said, his tone sullen. “Anyway, this room is soundproof.”

The big man gave Bob, Pete and Jupiter a long look, as if memorizing their appearance.

“I’ll have to have a little talk with your mother,” he said.