Free The Girl in the Face of the Clock by Charles Mathes Page A

butterflies beating their wings or an ocean of bubbles bursting in time with one another. Jane turned to the right, then the left, but still couldn’t grasp what it was or its source until one of the grandfather clocks began to chime the hour with a low dong .
    â€œIsn’t that a beautiful sound?” said Perry Mannerback, tilting his head up and closing his eyes.
    Jane looked at her wrist. According to her watch, it was a little before six o’clock. Perhaps she was a little slow. The days with Perry Mannerback sped by, though Jane still didn’t know exactly what she was supposed to be doing to earn her extravagant salary.
    A second grandfather clock began to chime. Then from the other room, a clear bell began to ring. Then another, and suddenly the air was vibrating with what a poet had once needed to coin a word to describe: tintinnabulation. The ringing and the singing of a hundred different bells and gongs. More joined in. And still more. On and on it went.
    Jane looked over to Perry Mannerback, who was standing in the center of the elegant entryway, his eyes closed in bliss. The tolling of the hour went on for nearly a minute, then began to taper off until all that was left was the rhythmic pulsing that Jane had noticed before. Now she knew what it was—the ticking of a thousand clocks!
    â€œI hear you collect clocks,” said Jane, pointing out the obvious.
    â€œCome on, I’ll show you,” said Perry, bursting with excitement. “Come on!”
    Jane followed him past the huge flower arrangement in the inner hall to the living room. If the vestibule had been spectacular, this room was positively incredible, a good fifty feet long and another thirty wide, furnished exquisitely with English antiques, plush sofas, Tiffany table lamps. It was the clocks, however, that dominated everything.
    Clocks sat on the marble ledge above the huge fireplace. Clocks crowded the Delft-tiled windowsills. Clocks packed the enormous breakfront. Clocks filled the shelves between the windows looking out over Central Park.
    One corner of the room had a collection of old-fashioned “anniversary” clocks under glass domes. Another corner teemed with carriage clocks of every size. The walls were hung with regulator clocks. Scores of brackets held scores of bracket clocks. Table clocks sat on every table. Mantel clocks occupied every mantel. There were clocks with human faces and clocks with painted scenes. There were big clocks that had pendulums and tiny clocks that fit into nutshells. There were ormolu clocks, lantern clocks, cartel clocks, and skeleton clocks. Against every inch of wall space not taken by a window or a Renoir were fine long case clocks with gold and silver faces standing at attention, like an army awaiting orders.
    â€œDo you like clocks?” asked their general.
    â€œI sleep next to one,” said Jane weakly. “He wakes me up in the morning.”
    â€œMe, too!”
    â€œWhy am I not surprised?”
    A door on the far side of the room opened and a squat woman in a white uniform marched out.
    â€œPerry Mannerback, what you doing here?” she demanded angrily, her hands on her hips. “You supposed to be having cocktails with Aunt Eunice. You supposed to be there for dinner. She call twice.”
    â€œI’m just here to pick up something, Olinda. This is Jane Sailor, Olinda. Jane’s my new bodyguard-assistant. Olinda winds all the clocks. And she takes care of me, don’t you, Olinda?”
    â€œOlinda going take care of you with a skillet, one these days,” said Olinda, shaking her fat fist. “You get out fast and go see Aunt Eunice.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAnd you eat your vegetables tonight at dinner. You hear me, Perry Mannerback?”
    â€œI will, I will.”
    Olinda muttered something in Spanish that sounded unmistakably like a curse, then huffing with disgust disappeared back behind the door through which she had