Myrtle's ticking metal box brought to Daughters of Isabella Hall

Myrtle Keeton’s ticking metal box is the concealed object she delivers to the Daughters of Isabella Hall at Leland Gaunt’s instruction. Its grilles, faint ticking, and barely glimpsed cube-shaped contents make it an ominous presence, while Myrtle’s deliberate refusal to look closely preserves the danger as a mystery.

Appearance and Uncertainty

The box has grilles on every side except the bottom. When Myrtle peers through one, its openings remind her of speakers in old-fashioned table radios; within, she can make out only a vague cube-shaped object. She does not examine it for long, feeling that it is safer not to know what it contains. The ticking is audible, but the object itself remains unidentified in this scene.

Delivery to the Hall

Gaunt tells Myrtle that the time has come to finish paying for her doll if she wants to keep it. Following his instructions, she takes the box and a sealed letter to the Daughters of Isabella Hall beside Our Lady of Serene Waters. She arrives on foot; one car is in the parking lot, but the parish hall is empty.

A notice on the door advertises the Daughters of Isabella meeting and asks for help planning Casino Nite. Inside, Myrtle places the box in one of the brightly painted compartments used by daycare children for their lunches and by Sunday School children for drawings and projects. It just fits. The hiding place puts the ticking object among ordinary signs of children’s activities, concealed in plain sight.

The Letter and Its Setting

Myrtle also slips Gaunt’s sealed envelope beneath the chairwoman’s agenda so that Betsy Vigue, the year’s Daughters of Isabella Activities Chairwoman, will see it when she picks up the papers. The agenda is already laid out for the evening meeting, alongside pens, pencils, and Casino Nite sign-up sheets. An American flag and a banner depicting the Infant of Prague flank the chairwoman’s table.

The letter’s visible instruction is an abusive warning addressed to a “POPE WHORE.” Together, the hidden box and the letter turn a church-group meeting space into the setting for Gaunt’s coercive errand: Myrtle delivers an unexplained, ticking object while ensuring that a separate message will confront its recipient. The scene identifies the box’s placement and the means by which it is concealed, but does not disclose its contents or what it will do.