The grandfather clock stood between the second and third casements. It was wrapped in ebonized walnut with gold-trimmed brass pilasters and a carved crest depicting a blindfolded eagle. Its swinging weight was a massive disk of cast lead four inches thick. He swung through a sixty-degree arc with a rhythmic, metal clonk that shook through the floorboards and traveled straight into the bones of Len’s shins.
Yet the face of the clock was dead.
The silvered dial had no numbers between one and eleven. The entire brass chapter ring had been ground flat with an emery wheel. That left only a single engraved notch at the twelve-hour mark. Two steel hands, tipped with stylized spades, had been soldered together with lead solder, fixing them immovably at twelve minutes past midnight. A small brass plaque, screwed to the base of the hood with round-headed rivets, carried the official stamp of the Provincial High Court. Endless EMERGENCY DECREE — RECORD SUSPENDED.
Behind the ebonized door, the lead weights hung motionless on braided steel cords, suspended three inches above the floor of the case. The winding arbor had been plugged with a copper dowel and peened flush. It was a masterpiece of office building: an instrument designed to sound like the passage of living time while keeping the legal universe frozen in the dark.
