375Q: Thief can freeze time

Possibly a short story. I may have read it in the 1980s, and I had the impression that it was already old then. It may have taken place anywhere from the mid 1800s to the 1960s. A man had a stopwatch or pocket watch that could freeze time for everyone but himself. He went to a fancy party, stopped time, and stole everyone’s jewels. At the end, he dropped the watch and it shattered irreparably. About the ending, I should probably add: the watch shatters while time is frozen. So the implication is that he will never be able to un-freeze time again.

5 thoughts on “375Q: Thief can freeze time

  1. Amanda

    Perhaps this is Roger Lee Vernon’s “The Stop Watch”?

    John D MacDonald wrote a novel with a similar watch called The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything, but the plot points didn’t match. However, the Wikipedia entry for that novel mentions Vernon’s story:
    “A similar plot line – a man stopping time – already appeared in 1955 in Roger Lee Vernon’s story “The Stop Watch”, included in the collection The Space Frontiers. Vernon treated the theme far more seriously, with his protagonist using the device to commit crimes with impunity and win the Third World War all by himself, and finally suffering a terrible perdition.”

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  2. Carol Carpenter

    Check out the collection of stories by Jack Finney called About Time. They all feature time travel, and that sounds like one of them.

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