The Visitor at Midnight
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At precisely twelve minutes past midnight, someone knocked upon my door, not with the nervous haste of a man pursued, but with the deliberation of one who expected to be obeyed.
On the threshold stood a tall gentleman whose clothes were immaculate, though rain fell heavily behind him. His face possessed an unnatural composure, but his left hand trembled beneath its glove.
“You are Dr Harcourt?” he asked.
“I am.”
“Then I require your discretion.”
He did not request it. He announced it as though my consent were a minor formality. Such audacity might have angered me, had it not been accompanied by unmistakable fear.
I allowed him to enter.
From his coat he produced a silver watch, its glass shattered and its hands arrested at nine seventeen. Upon the back, someone had engraved a single word:
REMEMBER.
“You recognise it?” I asked.
His expression remained impassive, but the trembling of his hand became violent.
“I have never seen it before.”
The denial was too swift. A thoughtful liar constructs his falsehood; a frightened one merely flees from the truth.
“You have not come here because the watch is broken,” I said. “You have come because it has returned.”
For the first time, his composure deserted him. He stared at me with incredulity.
“That,” he whispered, “is an outrageous insinuation.”
“No,” I replied. “It is an observation. An insinuation hides behind ambiguity. I have concealed nothing.”
His silence was eloquent. In that instant, I understood that the watch belonged neither to a stranger nor to a dead relative. It belonged to a man whom my visitor had betrayed, a man he had every reason to believe was dead.
Then the watch began to tick.