“The mistake you’re making in this case, Boyd,” Anthony said, “is thinking of it as like all your others. From what little I’ve seen so far of this affair it’s much more like a novel than real life, which is mostly dull and hardly ever true. As I asked you before, d’you ever read real detective stories? Gaboriau, for instance?”
“Lord, no, sir!” smiled the real detective.
“You should.”
“Pardon me, sir, but you’re a knock-out at this game yourself and it makes me wonder, so to speak, how you can hold with all that ’tec-tale truck.”
“A knock-out? Me?” Anthony laughed. “And I feel as futile as if I were Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a case of Lecoq’s.” He put a hand to his head. “There’s something about this room that’s haunting me! What is the damned thing? Boyd, there’s something wrong about the blasted place, I tell you!”
Boyd looked bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.” Then, to humour this eccentric, he added: “Ah! if only this furniture could tell us what it saw last night.”
“I said that to the clock,” said Anthony morosely, Then suddenly: “The clock, the clock! Grandpa did tell me something! I knew I’d seen or heard something that was utterly wrong, insane. The clock! Good God Almighty! What a fool not to think of it before!”
Boyd became alarmed. His tone was soothing. “What about the clock, sir?”
“It struck. D’you remember it beginning when you were taking the body away?”
“Yes.” Boyd was all mystification.