By ten o'clock next morning Caw, who had risen at five, had Grey House in a fair state of comfort for the reception of its new master, if not its new owner. The producers of warmth and electricity were at work again; the elderly housekeeper, who in Christopher's time had never been upstairs, was recalled from a near village just when she was beginning to wonder whether, after all, perfect happiness was included in retirement with an ample annuity, in the garden a man was already reducing the more apparent ravages of the gale. Caw himself quietly repaired the moderate damage done by the thief of the Green Box. Following the instructions written by his late master, he had sent a telegram to the Glasgow lawyer. He was in the study dusting the thick glass protecting the clock when, about ten thirty, Alan arrived via the passage.
"An odd place for a clock," the young man remarked. "I had a look at it last night. But why 'dangerous,' and what's that green stuff?"
"Mr. Craig intended that the clock should not be interfered with before it stopped—nearly a year hence, sir. I understand the liquid is something stronger than water, but whether explosive or poisonous, I could not say, sir."
"Curious notion!" Alan pointed to the pendulum flashing gloriously in the sunlight now breaking through the racing clouds. "Are they diamonds?"
"Yes, sir. Worth, I have heard, about two thousand pounds."
"Then, of course, they would account for the precautions."
"Very likely, sir. Only I have a feeling that this clock has a meaning which we shall not learn until it stops. The maker constructed it in a locked room in this house, of which my master had the key, and I think my master knew even more about it than Monsoor Guidet did. Is the temperature here agreeable to you, sir?"
"A trifle warm, don't you think?"
"It shall be regulated to suit you, sir. Mr. Craig was sensitive to a degree, one way or the other."
Alan turned abruptly from the clock which, somehow, he was finding fascinating. "Well, now, Caw," he said, dropping into an easy chair by the fire, "hadn't you better begin to explain things?"