“That theory does not account for the marks on the arm,” said the lawyer.

“It does, because it is based on the belief that there was somebody else in the room at the time, or immediately afterwards.”

“Thalassa?”

“Yes—­Thalassa.  He knows more about the events of this night than he will admit, but I shall have him yet.”

“But the theory does not explain the letter,” persisted the lawyer with an earnest look.  “Robert Turold could not possibly have had any premonition that his daughter intended to murder him, and even if he had, it would not have led him to write that letter with its strange postscript, which suggests that he had a sudden realization of some deep and terrible danger in the very act of writing it.  And if Thalassa was implicated, was he likely to go to such trouble to establish a theory of suicide, and then post a letter to me which destroyed that theory?”

“We do not know that Thalassa posted the letter—­it may have been Robert Turold himself.  As for premonitions—­” Barrant checked himself as if struck by a sudden thought, stood up, and walked across the room to where the broken hood clock had been replaced on its bracket.  He stood there regarding it, and the round eyes in the moon’s face seemed to return his glance with a heavy stare.

“If that fat face in the clock could only speak as well as goggle its eyes!” he said, with a mirthless smile.  “We should learn something then.  What’s the idea of it all—­the rolling eyes, the moon, the stars, and a verse as lugubrious as a Presbyterian sermon on infant damnation.  The whole thing is uncanny.”

“It’s a common enough device in old clocks,” said the lawyer, joining him.  “It is commoner, however, in long-cased clocks—­the so-called grandfather clock.  I have seen all sorts of moving figures and mechanisms in long-cased clocks in old English country houses.  A heaving ship was a very familiar device, the movement being caused, as in this clock, by a wire from the pendulum.  I have never seen a specimen with the rotating moon-dial before, though they were common enough in some parts of England at one time.  This is a Dutch clock, and the earlier Dutch makers were always fond of representing their moons as human faces.  It was made by a great master of his craft, as famous in his native land as old Dan Quare is in England, and its mechanism has outlived its creator by more than three hundred years.”

“Would it be an accurate timekeeper, do you think?” asked Barrant, looking mistrustfully at the motionless face of the moon, as though he suspected it of covertly sneering at him.

“I should think so.  These old clockmakers made their clocks to keep perfect time, and outlast Time himself!  And this clock is a perfect specimen of the hood clock, which marked a period in clock-making between the old weight clocks and the long cases.  Hood clocks were popular in their day in Holland, but they have always been rare in this country.  It would be interesting to trace how this one came into this house.  No doubt it was taken from a wreck, like so much of the furniture in old Cornish houses.”