Perhaps it was the strong glare of light issuing from the half-open
door of the Templar's Hall that attracted the attention of the
Clockwork man as he wandered along towards the lower end of the town.
He entered, and found himself in a small lobby curtained off from
the main body of the hall. He must have made some slight noise as he
stepped upon the bare boards, for the curtain was swept hastily back,
and the Curate, who was acting as chief steward of the proceedings,
came hurriedly forward.
As he approached the figure standing beneath the incandescent lamp, the
clerical beam upon the Curate's clean-shaven features deepened into a
more secular expression of heartfelt relief.
"I'm so glad you have come at last," he began, in a strong whisper, "I
was beginning to be afraid you were going to disappoint us."
"I am certainly late," remarked the Clockwork man, "about eight
thousand years late, so far as I can judge."
The Curate scarcely seemed to catch this remark. "Well, I'm glad
you've turned up," he went on, "it's so pitiful when the little ones
have to be disappointed, and they have been so looking forward to the
conjuring. Your things have arrived."
"What things?" enquired the Clockwork man.
"Your properties," said the Curate, "the rabbits and mice, and so
forth. They came this afternoon. I had them put on the stage."
He fingered nervously with his watch, and then his eye rested for a
second upon the other's head gear.
"Excuse me, but you _are_ the conjurer, aren't you?" he enquired, a
trifle anxiously.
Before the Clockwork man had time to reply to this embarrassing
question, the curtain was again swiftly drawn, and an anxious female
face appeared. "James, has the conjurer--Oh, yes, I see he has. Do be
quick, James. The picture is nearly over."
The face disappeared, and the Curate's doubts evaporated for the
moment. "Will you come this way?" he continued, and led the way through
a long, dark passage to the back of the hall. Behind the screen, upon
which the picture was being shown, there was a small space, and here
a stage had been erected. Upon a small table in the centre stood a
large bag and some packages. The Curate adjusted the small gas-jet
so as to produce an illumination sufficient to move about. "We must
talk low," he explained, pointing to the screen in front of them, "the
cinematograph is still showing. We shall be ready in about ten minutes.
Can you manage in that time?"
But the Clockwork man made no reply. He stood in the middle of the
stage and slowly lifted a finger to his nose. The Curate's doubts
returned. Something seemed to occur to him as he examined his companion
more closely. "You haven't been taking anything, my good man, have you?
Anything of an alcholic nature?"
"Conjuring," said the Clockwork man, slowly, "obsolete form of
entertainment. Quickness of the hand deceives the eye."
"Er--yes," murmured the Curate. He laughed, rather hysterically, and
clasped his hands behind his back. "I suppose you do the--er--usual
things--gold watches and so forth out of--er--hats. The children have
been so looking forward--"
He paused and unclasped his hands. The Clockwork man was looking at
him very hard, and his eyes were rolling in their sockets in a most
bewildering fashion. There was a long pause.
"Dear me," the Curate resumed at last, "there must be some mistake. You
don't look to me like a conjurer. You see, I wrote to Gamages, and they
promised they would send a man. Naturally, I thought when you--"
"Gamages," interrupted the Clockwork man, "wait--I seem to
understand--it comes back to me--universal providers--cash
account--nine and ninepence--nine and ninepence--nine and ninepence--I
_beg_ your pardon."
"Really!" The Curate's jaw dropped several inches. "I must apologise.
You see, I'm really rather flurried. I have the burden of this
entertainment upon my shoulders. It was I who arranged the conjuring. I
thought it would be so nice for the children." He started rubbing his
hands together vigorously, as though to cover up his embarrassment.
"Then--then you aren't the man from Gamages?"
"No," said the Clockwork man, with a certain amount of dignity, "I am
the man from nowhere."
The Curate's hands became still. "Oh, dear." He wrestled with the
blankness in his mind. "You're certainly--forgive me for saying
it--rather an odd person. I'm afraid we've both made a mistake, haven't
we?"
"Wait," said the Clockwork man, as the Curate walked hesitatingly
towards the door, "I begin to grasp things--conjuring--"
"But _are_ you the conjurer?" asked the Curate, coming back.
"Where I come from," was the astonishing reply, "we are all conjurers.
We are always doing conjuring tricks."
The Curate's hands were busy again. "I really am quite at a loss," he
murmured.
"It was a characteristic of the earlier stages of the human race,"
said the Clockwork man, as though he were addressing a class of
students upon some abstruse subject, "that they exercised the arts
of legerdemain, magic, illusion and so forth, purely as forms of
entertainment in their leisure hours."
"Now that sounds interesting," murmured the Curate, as the other
paused, although rather for matter than for breath, "it's so
_authoritative_--as though it were a quotation from some standard work.
All the same, and much as I should like to hear more--"
"It is a quotation," explained the Clockwork man solemnly, "from a work
I was reading when I--when the thing happened to me. It is published by
Gamages, and the price is nine and nine pence--nine and nine pence--Oh,
bother--"
"I'll make a note of it," said the Curate. "But you must really excuse
me now. I have so much to see to. There's the refreshments. The
sandwiches are only half cut--"
"It was not until the fifty-ninth century," continued the Clockwork
man, speaking with a just perceptible click, "that man became a
conjurer in real life. We have here an instance of the complete
turning over of human ideas. Ancient man conjured for amusement;
modern man conjures as a matter of course. Since the invention of
the clock and all that its action implies, including the discovery of
at least three new dimensions, or fields of action, man's simplest
act of an utilitarian nature may be regarded as a sort of conjuring
trick. Certainly our forefathers, if they could see us as we are now
constituted, would regard them as such--"
"So frightfully interesting," the Curate managed to interpose, "but I
really cannot spare the time." He had reverted now to the alcoholic
diagnosis.
"The work in question," continued the Clockwork man, without taking any
notice at all of the other's impatience, "is of a satirical nature.
Its purpose is to awaken people to a sense of the many absurdities in
modern life that result from a too mechanical efficiency. It is all in
my head. I can spin it all out, word for word--"
"Not now," hastily pleaded the Curate. "Some other time I should be
glad to hear it. I am," his mouth opened very wide, "a great reader
myself. And of course, as a professional conjurer, your interest in
such a book would be two-fold."
"When you asked me if I were a conjurer," said the Clockwork man, "I
at once recalled the book. You see, it's actually in my head. That is
how we read books now. We wear them inside the clock, in the form of
spools that unwind. What you have said brings it all back to me. It
suddenly occurs to me that I am indeed a conjurer, and that all my
actions in this backward world must be regarded in the light of magic."
The Curate's eyebrows shot up in amazement. "Magic?" he queried, with a
short laugh. "Oh, we didn't bargain for magic. Only the usual sleight
of hand."
"You see, I had lost faith in myself," said the Clockwork man,
plaintively. "I had forgotten what I could do. I was so terribly run
down."
"Ah," said the Curate, kindly, "very likely that's what it is. The
weather has been very trying. One does get these aberrations. But I
do hope you will be able to struggle through the performance, for the
children's sake. Dear me, how did you manage to do that?"
The Curate's last remark was rapped out on a sharp note of fright and
astonishment, for the Clockwork man, as though anxious to demonstrate
his willingness to oblige, had performed his first conjuring trick.