“But the confederate?” I interrupted again.

“It was his son, of course. He knew. He had helped to make the casket. He had helped to purloin it, and he it was who had hidden it. But not even to his faithful son would the mad jeweler leave the jewels. His cunning plan had become infinitely dear to him; and because this son knew, he must be sacrificed. So that after 89he had worked side by side with his father on the clock, and had returned from his last errand in summoning the Doge, it was only to meet death at last. For we can not doubt that the father poisoned his son as well as himself. And so the hiding-place of the casket and the jewels is hidden in the clock for no man to guess unless he be such a man as da Sestos–one who has something of the very madness of desire and cunning that possessed the goldsmith.”

89

“Unless–unless that son played the father false! There, there is the doubt on which your ingenious fabric totters!” I cried. I felt myself grow pale at the thought.

“You fool,” he answered violently, “do you think I have not thought of that? But one never has a certainty in this world. One must take something on trust. And, by heaven, I am staking all on that son’s loyalty to his mad father.”

He sat in my armchair, huddled up, his face very pale and haggard in the dim candle-light. But his eyes were burning like those of the jeweler Giovanni. Then he roused himself and began to walk slowly about the room. At last, in the most commonplace tone in the world, he asked:

“Do you know anything of automaton clocks?”

90“Nothing, except that they do extraordinary things.”

90

“Things most extraordinary. You have never heard perhaps of the clock made by Le Denz?”

I shook my head.

“Really? That was a chef d’œuvre of the bizarre and wonderful. An automaton child wrote everything that was dictated to it–everything.”

chef d’œuvre

“Impossible!”

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