De Marigny’s clock
De Marigny’s clock is a tall, coffin-shaped object in the New Orleans room where Carter’s estate is discussed. Its unfamiliar timekeeping first supplies a background rhythm. By the end of Through the Gates of the Silver Key, it has become the apparent route of an unexplained disappearance.
3 min read · 498 words
Appearance and timekeeping
The clock stands in a niche in de Marigny’s room. It is shaped like a coffin, bears a dial with unfamiliar signs and has four hands that do not correspond to any known terrestrial system of time.
Sources: [1]
Its ticking recurs throughout the estate meeting. The rhythm is not merely described once as an unusual decoration. It becomes increasingly connected with the cadence of the cosmic events in Chandraputra’s account.
The story gives no measured dimensions, construction plans or conventional mechanism. A visual interpretation can preserve the tall case, marked dial and four hands without inventing a supposedly documented technical design.
The visitor’s interpretation
Chandraputra associates the ticking with the rhythm of the Ancient Ones beyond the first threshold. He suggests that the clock was made by beings knowledgeable about the First Gateway and asks how many of its subtler properties de Marigny understands.
He also proposes that it reached the owner through a yogi mentioned by Harley Warren, a figure said to have visited Yian-Ho and brought things away. The passage is a question and an interpretation from the visitor, not a fully confirmed chain of ownership.
These remarks turn a room furnishing into potential evidence for the account being told. If the rhythm is shared, the meeting and the supposedly remote region are less separate than the listeners first assumed.
Sources: [1]
The apparent passage
After Aspinwall removes the visitor’s mask, the figure’s behavior changes. It moves toward the clock and manipulates the door with a dark claw. De Marigny and Phillips see it enter and close the case.
When de Marigny opens the door, the interior is empty. The ticking continues. No route inside is described, and the story does not provide a view of the place to which the figure has gone.
The clock is therefore an apparent gateway in the witnessed sequence, but its exact operation and destination remain unknown. It is not established as a vehicle that always returns its user to Yaddith or as a container holding a stable passage to a single mapped location.
Sources: [1]
The object that remains
A year later, Carter is still missing and the estate unresolved. The surviving witnesses can question aspects of the encounter, including whether the vanishing might have been a shared hallucination under stress and incense fumes. Neither clearly saw the uncovered face that killed Aspinwall with shock.
The clock remains available to de Marigny, who listens to it without a final answer. Its continued presence makes the conclusion more unsettling than a vanished artifact would: the possible threshold still occupies an ordinary room, but possession does not amount to understanding.
Later uses of clocks or de Marigny family members in other fiction require separate credits. This entry records the object and its uncertain properties in the Lovecraft–Price story.
Sources: [1]
References
- Through the Gates of the Silver Key — original text
The fictional narrative is evidence for what the story says, not proof of events in the real world.
At a glance
H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Etienne-Laurent de Marigny
Tall, coffin-like case
Unfamiliar signs and four hands
A figure enters and is absent when the case is opened
Not established