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The House Of Silvery Voices
by
The new clock struck the half after eight as they reached the turn in the path. A long, quavering howl, mingled of rage and desperation, answered in Willy Woolly’s voice.
“You hear?” said Stepfather Time anxiously to the Little Red Doctor. “The dog is not himself.”
They saw him rear up against the clock case. He seemed to be trying to tear it open with his teeth.
“Willy!” cried his master in a tone such as, I suppose, the well-loved companion had not heard twice before in his life. “Down, Willy!”
The dog drooped back. But it was not in obedience. For once he disregarded the master’s command. Perhaps he did not even hear it in the absorption of his dread and rage. Step by step he withdrew, then rushed and launched himself straight at the timepiece. Slight though his bulk was, the impetus of the charge did the work. The clock reeled, toppled, and fell outward through the window; then–
From the House of Silvery Voices rose a roar that smote the heavens. A roar and a belch of flame and a spreading, poisonous stench that struck the two men in the park to earth. When they struggled to their feet again, the smoke had parted and the House of Silvery Voices gaped open, its front wall stripped bodily away. But within, the sound of the busy industry of time went on uninterrupted.
Weaving and wobbling on his feet, Stepfather Time staggered toward the pot calling on the name of Willy Woolly. At the gate he stopped, put forth his hand, and lifted from the railing a wopsy, woolly fragment, no bigger than a sheet of note paper. It was red and warm and wet.
“He’s gone,” said Stepfather Time.
The Clock of Conscience took up the tale. “Gone. Gone. Gone,” it pealed.
As the collector would not leave the shattered house, they sent for me to stay the night with him. A strange vigil! For now it was the man who followed with intent, unworldly eyes that which I, with my lesser vision, could not discern. And the Unseen moved swiftly about the desolate room, low to the floor, and seemed finally to stop, motionless beneath a caressing hand. I thought to hear that dull, measured thumping of a grateful tail, but it was only the Twelve Apostles getting ready to strike.
Only once that night did Stepfather Time speak, and then not to me.
“Tell her,” he said in an assured murmur, “that I shan’t be long.”
“Not-long. Not-long. Not-long. Not-long. Not-long,” confirmed Grandfather from his stance on the stairway.
In that assurance Stepfather Time fell asleep. He did not go out again with his pushcart, but sat in the rear room while the Mordaunt Estate in person superintended the job of putting a new front on the house.
The night after it was finished I received an urgent telephone call to come there at once. At the entrance I met the Little Red Doctor coming out.
“The clocks have stopped,” said he gently.
So I turned to cross the park with him.
“I shall certify,” said he, “heart disease.”
“You may certify what you please,” said I. “But what do you believe?”
The Little Red Doctor, who prides himself on being a hard-bitted materialist, glared at me as injuriously as if my innocent question had been an insult.
“I don’t believe it!” he averred violently. “Do you take me for a sentimental idiot that I should pin silly labels on my old friend, Death?” His expression underwent a curious change. “But I never saw such joy on any living face,” he muttered under his breath.
* * * * *
The House of Silvery Voices is silent now. But its echo still lives and makes music in Our Square. For, with the proceeds of Stepfather Time’s clocks, an astounding total, we have built a miniature clock tower facing Number 37, with a silvery voice of its own, for memory. The Bonnie Lassie designed the tower, and because there is love and understanding in all that the Bonnie Lassie sets her wonder-working hand to, it is as beautiful as it is simple. Among ourselves we call it the Tower of the Two Faithful Hearts.
The silvery voice within it is the product of a paragon among timepieces, a most superior instrument, of unimpeachable construction and great cost. But it has one invincible peculiarity, the despair of the best consulting experts who have been called in to remedy it and, one and all, have failed for reasons which they cannot fathom. How should they!
It never keeps time.