Distantly, the church clock answered them by beginning to strike.
"Only twelve?" demanded Sharpless in an incredulous voice. He had whirled round after counting the first three. "Only midnight? Cripes, it can't be. There's something wrong with that clock. It's two o'clock in the morning, or more. It must be."
"Frank, you've got to get hold of yourself."
"I tell you, there's something wrong with that clock!"
But there was nothing wrong with the clock.
They discovered this long before its clang had struck the quarter, the half-hour, the three-quarter, and the hour again.
In Sharpless's present frame of mind, Courtney thought it best to keep him away from the house, in case he made a scene. He sat Sharpless down on a stone bench under the trees. He got him to smoking cigarettes. The lights of the house burned more brightly as those of the town died; and still no word came from the sick-room upstairs.
The clang of the church clock got into their thoughts. They heard it when it did not strike, and were startled by it when it did.
While the hours dragged on, Sharpless talked. He talked monotonously, quickly, in a low voice which rarely varied in key. He talked of himself and Vicky Fane. Of what they were going to do when she was well. Of what he was going to do at Staff College. He said he might be sent out to India, and gave a long description of life in India. He quoted his father and his uncles and his grandfather for this.
Dawn, Courtney thought, could not be far off. It would come white and ghostly among the fruit trees.