Frank took a mantel clock to the repair shop because it chimed thirteen times at noon. It had belonged to his father, who had admired punctuality and would have considered an extra hour a personal insult.
The repairer, Mei, placed it on her workbench and asked when it had started misbehaving.
“Last Tuesday,” Frank said. “Before that it was reliably twelve.”
She wound the clock, listened to its tick and examined the small brass hammer that struck the chime. Frank watched her hands. He had tried to fix it himself with a screwdriver, but had stopped when a spring leaped out and landed in his tea.
Mei found the spring back inside, in the wrong position. She moved it. At noon the next day, the clock chimed twelve. Frank collected it and carried it home in a shopping bag lined with towels.
That evening it chimed seven at six o’clock. At midnight it chimed one. Frank called Mei in the morning. She asked whether the hands were correct.
“They’re correct. The bell isn’t.”
“Bring it back.”
Frank returned with the clock and a notebook recording every chime. Mei inspected the mechanism again. She set the hands to just before three. The clock chimed three. She moved them to just before six. It chimed six. Frank insisted it had been wrong at home.
“Where do you keep it?” she asked.
“On the mantelpiece.”
“Near anything magnetic?”
“A photograph, a vase and a small radio.”
Mei explained that the radio would not confuse a mechanical clock’s chime. Frank felt oddly disappointed; he had been ready to blame it. She asked him to describe precisely how he set the time after bringing the clock home.
“I turned the big hand to the right number.”
“Did you let it chime at each hour?”
“No. I moved it straight to six.”
She showed him how to move the minute hand slowly, pausing at the chime. The clock needed to complete each sequence before the next one. Frank practised. Three, four, five. At six the clock sounded exactly six times.
“So I broke it by trying to make it punctual?”
“You confused it by hurrying.”
He took the clock home and set it carefully. For two days it behaved. On the third, it chimed thirteen at noon again. Frank returned to Mei, this time carrying the clock without the shopping bag.
She opened the case. A small metal washer had slipped into the chime wheel. It had been loose since his original screwdriver attempt. Frank recognized it as part of the fitting that had held his father’s old photograph on the wall.
Mei removed the washer and tested the clock. Twelve clear chimes. Frank apologized for making three visits.
“Not at all,” Mei said. “At least you kept records.”
Frank glanced at his notebook. Every wrong chime was listed against a time.
“That’s how Dad taught me,” he said. “If a clock gives you thirteen at noon, write down the hour you owe back.”