"De Marigny's Clock"

by Brian Lumley

originally published The Caller of the Black, Arkham House 1971

Ho hum - another boring night at Blowne House.  Titus Crow is awakened by some burglars, who figure he must have some valuable shit there.  Eventually they find the weird clock and demand that he open it.  Crow explains that he doesn't know how, and would in fact be elated if they could figure it out.  They do.  And some horrible beasties snatch them back into the clock, killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

This is, I suspect, the first published reference to the magical Time Clock which will figure prominently in Lumley's later, painful Titus Crow sextet.  As a story this is nothing more than an amusing sketch, though I can't help but think of all the pain we'd have been spared if the burglars had just shot Crow.