The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cuckoo Clock, by Wesley Barefoot

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Title: The Cuckoo Clock

Author: Wesley Barefoot

Illustrator: Ernie Barth

Release Date: August 6, 2009 [EBook #29623]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE
CUCKOO
CLOCK

BY WESLEY BAREFOOT

_You know a murderer preys on your household--lives
with you--depends on you--and you have no defence!_

Death wore the seeming of a battered Chevrolet.

The child's scream and the screech of rubber on concrete knifed through
two seconds of time before snapping, like a celery stalk of sound, into
aching silence. The silence of limbo, called into being for the space of
a slow heartbeat. Then the thud of running feet, the rising hubbub of
many voices.

"Give her air!"

"Keep back. Don't try to move her."

"Somebody call an ambulance."

"Yeah, and somebody call a cop, too."

"I couldn't help it." It was the driver of the ramshackle Chevvie. "She
fell off the curb right in front of me. Honest to God, it wasn't my
fault."

"Got to report these things right away," said the grey-haired man beside
him. "No cause to worry if you ain't to blame."

"Probably no brakes," said a heavily accented voice, and another spoke
as if on cue, "Probably no insurance, neither."

"Let me through! Oh, please--" The woman's voice was on the edge of
hysteria. She came through the crowd like an automaton, not seeing the
people she shoved and elbowed aside.

* * * * *

"D.O.A.," said the woman heavily. Her face was no longer twisted with
shock, and she was almost pretty again. "D.O.A. Dead on arrival, it
means. Oh, Jim, I never knew they said that." Suddenly there were tears
in her blue eyes. There had been many tears, now.

[Illustration: _Illustrator_: Ernie Barth]

"Take it easy, Jean, honey." Jim Blair hoisted his lank six feet out of
the old rocker, and crossed the room, running a nervous hand through his
cornshuck hair. _She's only thirty_, he thought, _a