The House with a Clock In Its Walls Read Online Free Page A

there searching. What he was searching for, Lewis couldn’t say.
    Again and again, as on that first night, he had heard the floor boards creak outside his door. Again and again he had heard Jonathan tiptoeing stealthily down the hall, entering rooms, closing doors. He heard him overhead onthe third floor, where Jonathan hardly ever went during the day. Then he would be back downstairs, poking around, stumbling into furniture. Maybe he was scared of burglars. Maybe so, but then why did he pound on the wall? Burglars seldom got into walls.
    Lewis had to find out what was going on. And so, one night a little after twelve, Lewis lowered himself silently from his bed to the cold floor boards. As stealthily as he could, he tiptoed across the room, but the warped boards complained under his feet. By the time he got to the door, he was thoroughly shaken. He wiped his hands on his robe several times and turned the knob. He took a deep breath, let it out, and stepped out into the dark hallway.
    Lewis clamped his hand over his mouth. He had stepped on the protruding head of a nail. It didn’t really hurt much, but Lewis was scared of tetanus. When his panic had died down, he took another step. He began to edge his way down the hall.
    But Lewis was no better at stealthy creeping than you might think and, by the time he had bumped his head against a heavy, gilt picture frame for about the third time, Jonathan called to him from one of the distant rooms.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lewis! Stop playing Sherlock Holmes! You make a better Dr. Watson. Come on and join me. I’m in the bedroom with the green fireplace.”
    Lewis was glad that his red face didn’t shine in the dark. Well, at least Jonathan wasn’t mad.
    Lewis picked his way down the hall until he found an open door. There was Jonathan, standing in the dark with a flashlight in his hand. He was playing the light over the mantel clock, a boxy black affair with gold handles on the sides, like a coffin.
    “Evening, Lewis. Or morning, as the case may be. Would you care to join me on my rounds?”
    Jonathan’s voice sounded tight and nervous. Lewis hesitated a moment and then he plunged in. “Uncle Jonathan, what are you doing?”
    “Stopping the clocks. During the day it’s nice to have clocks ticking all over the house, but at night it keeps me awake. You know how it is, Lewis, with faucets and . . . and the like.”
    Still chattering nervously, Jonathan turned the clock around, reached into the back of it, and halted the stubby pendulum. Then he motioned for Lewis to follow him and, waving the flashlight a little too cheerfully, walked on to the next room. Lewis followed, but he was puzzled. “Uncle Jonathan, why don’t you turn the room lights on?”
    His uncle was silent for a minute. Then he said, in that same nervous voice, “Oh, well, you know how it is, Lewis. If I were to go from one room to another snapping lights on and off, what would the neighbors think? And what about the electric bill? Do you know that you get billed for an hour’s worth of electricity every time you snap the lights on and off?”
    This explanation did not sound convincing to Lewis. In the first place, Uncle Jonathan had never before given any sign that he cared what the neighbors thought about anything he did. If he wanted to sit in the glider under the chestnut tree and play a saxophone at 3 A.M. he was likely to do just that. In the second place, Jonathan had more than once left the floor lamp in his study burning all night. He was a careless man, and not the sort who worried about big electric bills. It was true that Lewis had only known his uncle for three weeks, but he felt that he already had a pretty good idea of what Jonathan was like.
    On the other hand, he couldn’t very well say, “Uncle Jonathan, you’re lying through your teeth!” so he silently followed his uncle to the next room, the second-best upstairs bathroom. It had a fireplace too—a white tile one—and