The hero of our story, this Christmas Season, was an older gentleman named Mr. Arthur Latchloose. He was quite wealthy, a banker to be precise, and he had one remarkable hobby: collecting rare antiquarian treasures.

Mr. Arthur Latchloose lived a full and interesting life, earning his college degree in Finance, serving in the Army as an officer, and then making a very successful career in banking. As a young man, he married his high school sweetheart right out of college, before he went off to war. When he returned, luckily in one piece and with a whole bunch of medals, he and Gretchen Latchloose got busy. They had two wonderful children, Eddie and Mary, who brought their parents all the usual happiness and heart-aches. Then, however, things got complicated and didn't go so well. There was a whole lot of heart ache and estrangement, and finally Gretchen passed away after an illness.

Arthur Latchloose was never the same after she died. He was a handsome older man, with a full head of white hair and a craggy face, and blue eyes that sparkled when he felt chatty--but that was not very often anymore. The kids moved away and didn't call or write, and Arthur couldn't figure out why. He had no idea that he must share a great deal of the blame for his isolation.

Thus, Arthur was left alone, owning a drafty old bank building and a bunch of wonderful memories that faded a bit like the old photographs he kept all around his office. Try as he might, he couldn't help becoming a little bitter, and then a bit more bitter, and finally an old grouch. In the end, he kept to himself and puttered about his money and his antiquities. That was where his newest adventure in life began--when he acquired a remarkable grandfather clock originally made at the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, for an Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. When the Ottoman Empire became history during World War I, the clock had long since become the property of an Arab prince living near Baghdad, and finally, through some shenanigans, wound up in the possession of one Major Jarlid, late of the U.S. Army, now retired and alas not long for this world. Jarlid needed money, and he found just the buyer for his priceless antiquity. You guessed it--Arthur Latchloose. Mr. Latchloose, however, had no idea about the danger and the potency of the mechanical wonder he was about to acquire.

Meanwhile, Christmas Season is a special time for writers and readers alike. Stories told during this period require a bit of extra sparkle and shine, a real warm-up that sets the proper mood. The opening chapter, therefore, dear reader, is devoted primarily to getting us in just the right mood. Christmas stories are different in that they hang upon not only the usual story elements--mystery, danger, and a bit of sheer fright, all of which exist within the caverns of this tale--but also hang upon a bit of the old, well, the old blarney if this author may say so. But this isn't just ordinary blarney, as you will soon find out. This story is about the strangest things that ever happened to Arthur Latchloose, and it may turn out to be the same for you.

One night right after the turn of the century--in a city we shall not name, at a time just before Christmas--snow fell silently on the rooftops, and the very air smelled of snow. The white crystals were dry and thick, and plummeted from an ash-colored sky.

A custard-bright moon with a shocked face floated behind drifting ships of cloud. Moonlight glittered on the river, under the bridges, on the frozen streets.

The snow flakes disappeared among the black zags and zigs of the skyline. They briefly reappeared in the gritty circles of lantern glow on street corners. Then they again lost themselves in rapidly accumulating flows and drifts along darkened house walls.

Snow muffled the slam of a door, a shout for a cab, a laugh at a joke, a goodnight, and a gunning motor. The air smelled briefly of exhaust. Gloomy pines in the park sighed in the wind, and their clean scent brushed the air clean.

Night and snow dimmed the glow of a clock's blue neon edge in a hairdresser's shop, and a yellow beer sign in the corner of a tavern window, and the high-tech stainless steel lettering on a shop selling fancy glass and steel coffee machines colored bright yellow or red or green or blue or just plain glossy white. One by one, the shop lights winked out and the doors rattled, being locked by departing employees. Their footsteps were muffled on the white sidewalks.

The streets were nearly empty, with a few last cars going here, and a few last pedestrians hurrying there. It was too late for the buses, and too early for the city plowing trucks. Here a Christmas wreath hung on a door, and there a string of colored lights traced a window frame. Somewhere on a chilly porch in a poor part of town, a row of children's boots stood in a row, and a kitchen was alive with pots banging and parents talking while the house smelled of macaroni and children laughed by the fireplace.

Most of the big city office buildings dimmed down, except for the glow of corridor lights. Most of the offices were empty, except for cleaning crews who had the courage to venture out. The shopping center with its neon and bright windows emptied quickly. There was a traffic jam, but it thinned out. Silence and emptiness reigned as the night deepened. The train station had been jammed with rush hour traffic, but now stood closed and abandoned for the night. The clock over the concrete platform read 11:50, barely visible through the ice crystals gathering on the glass and wrapping around the black, wrought-iron arches. Oh yes, and a very slight, cold wind moaned lightly, and keened as it circled around in ghostly white swirls.

There was one older brick building at the edge of that dimly glowing downtown. The Latchloose Building's battered red walls were covered with a lacy filigree of snow dust, like white ivy crawling up to drink in moonlight. The old office building's windows were so dark they look like shiny black marble reflecting the amber street lights. But there was one window filled with a faint green light, and a lone figure dimly visible at a corner computer screen. The elderly man working in the solitude of his office late at night was one Arthur Latchloose, banker and real estate financier, who was exceedingly rich in money and exceedingly poor in all else. There he was again in his office--long after the staff had left, like just about every other day of the year. He barely noticed the monotonous clanging of three bells in a nearby clocktower on the quarter hour, so close that one could almost feel the ga-wump, ga-wump of the mighty steel works thundering in their sturdy lumber containment. He ignored the bells, focusing instead on the computer whose greenish glow illuminated, in a sepulchral manner, his aging but still craggily handsome features.

Mr. Arthur Latchloose acquired a tidy fortune in banking and real estate, and lived an exemplary life, as he saw it. He and his late wife Gretchen raised two children, prayed in the right manner, did all the good and proper things, donated to charity, and supported worthy causes. In recent years Mr. Latchloose had a series of heartbreaks--his wife died of cancer, his children grew up and moved away out of contact, and it seemed to him the world had passed him by. He had memories aplenty, wonderful ones, of Christmases and other holidays when the children were small and Andie was still young and beautiful, but it had long since faded like the leaves on an autumn tree. He didn't think of himself as bitter, but more like disappointed. Some would say he was just sad, others that he was depressed, others that he was just a cranky and self-centered old man.

Arthur Latchloose did have one joy in life besides counting his money. He had a hobby--collecting antiquities; not antiques, because those were just recent bric-a-brac, but really old and very valuable stuff. He had long since stopped sending or receiving Christmas cards, and he had not exchanged gifts in a number of years since his grown children had abandoned him. Every year, however, he rewarded himself with a fine present. This year was going to be the best, for an old Army acquaintance had just offered to sell him a rare and unique clock. Latchloose had been waiting all evening for the other man's call--so long that he'd forgotten he was waiting.

As Arthur Latchloose sat in his office working into the night, the phone rang. Yes, it rang--it didn't warble or chirp or play a song like the newer phones--it rang honest-to-goodness like one of the earliest models. Mr. Latchloose was a bit eccentric in matters like this. A phone was a phone, not a canary or a cricket or a radio, and it should behave like a phone. His telephone was a black rubber gadget that long ago rode up and down in an elevator of the Empire State Building when that structure was brand-new. Mr. Latchloose refused to own any gadget that didn't behave as it should, and so he was eager to find proper pencils that scratched on paper, scissors that snipped when they cut string, and clocks that ticked the seconds and rang the hours as a proper clock should.

Now who could be calling at this late hour? Mr. Latchloose looked distractedly at the telephone that sat in a pool of lemon-yellow light beside his desk blotter. For a moment, he regarded the treasures on his desk, while contemplating whether he felt like communicating with anyone just now. The desk pad was of thick cowhide with thick, creamy blotter paper that had a few ink speckles--it once sat on the desk of a Seattle shipping king. The silver pen-and-pencil set bore the logo of an extinct airline that pioneered the skies of the 1930s. Ah yes, Major Jarlid. He'd almost forgotten. Latchloose lifted the receiver. "Yes?"

"Latchloose, do you have the money?" said a deep voice.