And the clock was ticking.
No! Wait a minute! It couldn’t be ticking. The clock-case had another glass panel, oblong, so that you could see the skeleton behind a brass pendulum: which was motionless.
The illusion had been produced by a large square metal-cased clock, with a small pendulum, on the mantelpiece. Its slow tick-tick animated the hush of an atmosphere flavoured with the smell of beer and old stone. But the tall clock said nothing.
Yet it gave the watcher a slight start, the skull face a smug look in its dusky recess. Martin was conscious of golden shine lying through the windows behind him, of Fleet House across the road in its aloofness. He went over to examine the clock. As he had expected, the oblong lower panel opened on little hinges. He peered inside, he peered up.
With finewires, and a heavier wire drilled into the head, the skeleton had been fastened to the back of the case; its feet and ankles partly concealed by a wooden fitting evidently designed to help the upright position. The clock-hands, like the pendulum, were dummies held by screw and spindle. You could adjust them to any position you liked. The hands now stood at ten minutes past twelve.
Tick-tick, tick-tick, tick-tick.
Richard Fleet would be here at any moment
Martin drew back his head and closed the glass panel. How this reminder of mortality had got there he did not know. And it didn't matter.
He went through another door into the second bar-parlour. Dominated by a large iron stove rather than the usual fireplace, full of wicker chairs, this room was distinctly a comedown from the first Nevertheless, Martin unlocked its front door. He had just turned the key when distantly, from the saloon-bar two rooms away, that particular door opened.
A voice called, "Martin!” He heard light, quick, running footsteps in tennis-shoes. And in the doorway of the second parlour, breathing hard, stood Jenny.