Mr. Justice Raffles

Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was.

His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit.

"I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain before he spoke.

"You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained.

"It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear."

I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was.

"Do you?" I demanded.

"Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of course."

"What clock?"

"The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road."

"How do you know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity.

"My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as well as I know the inside of this tower."

"Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy grinned in a way that ill became a captive.

"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the neighhour'ood."

"Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth merely broadened his grin.

"Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are."

"It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with quiet but most disquieting amusement.

"I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to keep an eye on me."

"Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon.

"I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend."

I said nothing to that.

"On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other hand" stooping to pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use hollering before you're out o' the wood."

I agreed, with more confidence than I felt.

"Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if to himself.

"Thought of what?"

"Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!"

"How do you know he didn't?"

"Because this 'appens to be the day!"