He was only just in time. On the way down the stairs that led to the
basement surgery the Clockwork man began to flap his ears violently,
and it was then that the Doctor noticed for the first time this
circumstance that had so puzzled Arthur Withers. But the faculty
seemed, in comparison with other exhibitions, a mere trifle, a sort of
mannerism that one might expect from a being so strangely constituted.
Pushing his companion into the surgery, the Doctor commenced opening
tins for all he was worth. The process calmed him, and he had time
to think a little. For half an hour he opened tins, and passed them
over to the Clockwork man, without noticing very much what the latter
did with them. Then he went on to bottles containing patent foods,
phosphates, hypophosphates, glycero-hypophosphates, all the phosphates
in fact, combined with malt or other substances, which might be
considered almost necessary as an auxiliary diet for the Clockwork man.
At least, the latter seemed grateful to receive whatever was given
to him, and his general manner became decidedly more possible. There
seemed less chance now of a drastic relapse. The Doctor had locked the
door of the surgery. It would be embarrassing to be discovered in such
circumstances, and Mrs. Masters might faint with horror at the sight of
the empty tins and bottles and the gorging visitor. It was symptomatic
of the Doctor's frame of mind that even now the one thing he dreaded
more than anything else was the intrusion of a curious world into this
monstrous proceeding. He had been forced into accepting the evidence of
his own eyes, but there still remained in him a strong desire to hush
up the affair, to protect the world at large from so fierce a shock to
its established ideas.
The surgery was a low-pitched apartment, and it was approached
by patients from the outside by way of the area steps. One door
communicated with the dark passage that led to the kitchen quarters,
and the other opened directly upon the area. A double row of shelves,
well stocked with bottles, occupied the centre of the room and divided
it into two halves. Beneath the window stood the Doctor's neat bureau,
and to the left of this was a low couch beside the wall. A shaded lamp
on the desk was sufficient to light the room for ordinary purposes;
but there was a gas burner near the further door, which had to be lit
when the Doctor was engaged upon some very close examination or had to
perform a slight operation. Directly underneath this burner there stood
an arm-chair of ample proportions, and it was here that the Clockwork
man had seated himself at the beginning of his orgy.
The Doctor sat upon the couch, with his hands limply hanging between
his knees. He was conscious of perspiration, but made no attempt to
wipe his forehead. His heart was knocking hard against his ribs, and
occasionally missing a beat. He noticed this fact also, but it caused
him little concern. Now and again he looked swiftly at the Clockwork
man and studied his extraordinary method of mastication, the rapid
vibratory movement of the jaws, the apparent absence of any kind of
voluntary effort.
Uppermost in the Doctor's mind was the reflection that he of all
persons should have been selected by an undiscriminating providence to
undergo this distressing and entirely unprecedented experience. It was
an ironic commentary upon his reactionary views and his comfortable
doctrine of common sense. He had been convinced in spite of himself,
and the effort to resist conviction had strained his mental powers
uncomfortably. He felt very strongly his inability to cope with the
many problems that would be sure to arise in connection with the
Clockwork man. It was too much for one man's brain. There would have
to be a convocation of all the cleverest men in Europe in order to
investigate such an appalling revelation. He pictured himself in
the act of introducing this genuine being from a future age, and
the description he would have to give of all that had happened in
connection with him. Even that prospect set his brain reeling. He
would like to be able to shirk the issue. It was enough to have looked
upon this archetype of the future; the problem now was to forget his
existence.
But that would be impossible. The Clockwork man was the realisation of
the future There was no evading that. The future. Man had evolved into
this. He had succeeded somehow in adding to his normal powers some kind
of mechanism that opened up vast possibilities of action in all sorts
of dimensions. There must have been an enormous preparatory period
before the thing became finally possible, generations of striving and
failure and further experiment. But the indefatigable spirit of man had
triumphed in the end. He had arisen at last superior to Time and Space,
and taken his place in the centre of the universe. It was a fulfilment
of all the prophecies of the great scientists since the discovery of
evolution.
Such reflections flitted hazily through the Doctor's mind as he strove
in vain to find a practical solution of the problem. What was the
clock? He knew, from hearsay, that it was situated at the back of
this strange being's head. Tom Driver had seen it, and described it
in his clumsy fashion. Since that episode the Doctor had visualised
something in the nature of an instrument affixed to the Clockwork
man's head, and perhaps connected with his cerebral processes. Was it
a kind of super-brain? Had there been found some means of lengthening
the convolutions of the human brain, so that man's thought travelled
further and so enabled him to arrive more swiftly at ultimate
conclusions? That seemed suggestive. It must be that in some way the
cerebral energy of man had been stored up, as electricity in a battery,
and then released by mechanical processes.
At least, that was the vague conclusion that came into the Doctor's
mind and stuck there. It was the only theory at all consonant with
his own knowledge of human anatomy. All physiological action could be
traced to the passage of nervous energy from one centre to another,
and it was obvious that, in the case of the Clockwork man, such energy
was subjected to enormous acceleration and probably distributed
along specially prepared paths. There was nothing in the science of
neuropathy to account for such disturbances and reactions. There were
neural freaks--the Doctor had himself treated some remarkable cases
of nervous disorder--but the behaviour of the Clockwork man could not
be explained by any principle within human knowledge. Not the least
puzzling circumstance about him was the fact that now and again his
speech and manner made it impossible to accept the supposition or
mechanical origin; whilst at other times his antics induced a positive
conviction that he was really a sort of highly perfected toy.
Presently the Clockwork man got up and began walking up and down the
room, in his slow, flat-footed manner.
"How do you feel now?" ventured the Doctor, arousing himself with an
effort.
"Oh, so, so," sighed the other, "only so, so--I can't expect to feel
myself, you know." He reached to the end of the room, and jerking
himself round, started on the return journey. The Doctor arose slowly
and remained standing. There was barely room for two people to walk up
and down.
"Anything might happen," the Clockwork man continued, plaintively, "I
feel as though I might slip again, you know--slip back another thousand
years or so." He turned again. "I've got to get worse before I get
better," he sighed, and then stopped to examine the rows of bottles
arranged along the shelves.
"What are these?" he enquired.
"Medicines," said the Doctor, without enthusiasm.
"Do they help people to work?"
"H'm, yes--chemical action--tonics. People get run down, and I have to
give them something to stimulate the system."
"I see," the Clockwork man nodded sagely. "But they wouldn't be any use
to me. What I need is adjustment, regulation." He looked hard at the
doctor, with a pathetic expression of enquiry. "My clock--" he began,
and stopped abruptly.
They were facing one another now. The doctor swallowed hard several
times, and he felt the blood tingling in his temples. The dreaded
moment had come. He had got to see this strange instrument that
distinguished the Clockwork man from ordinary mortals. There was no
shrinking from the eerie experience. Underneath that borrowed hat and
wig there was something--something utterly strange and outside the pale
of human ingenuity. In the name of common humanity it was incumbent
upon the Doctor to face the shock of this revelation, and yet he shrunk
from it like a frightened child. He felt no trace of curiosity, no
feverish anxiety to investigate this mystery of the future. His knees
trembled violently. He did not want to see the clock. He would have
given a hundred pounds to be spared the ordeal before him.
Slowly, with his customary stiffness of movement, the Clockwork man
raised his arms upwards and removed the soft clerical hat. He held it
aloft, as though uncertain what to do with it, and the Doctor took it
from him with a shaking hand.
Next moment the wig came off, and there was disclosed to the Doctor's
gaze a bald cranium.
Then the Clockwork man turned himself slowly round.
The Doctor shot out a hand and gripped the framework of the shelves.
As his eyes rested upon the object that now confronted him, he swung
slowly round until his body was partly supported by the shelves. His
mouth opened wide and remained stretched to its limit.
At first, what he saw looked like another face, only it was round and
polished. A second glance made it quite plain that instead of a back to
the Clockwork man's head, there was a sort of glass dial, beneath which
the doctor dimly made out myriads of indicators, tiny hands that moved
round a circle marked with inconceivably minute divisions. Some of the
hands moved slowly, some only just visibly, whilst others spun round
with such speed that they left only a blurred impression of a vibratant
rotary movement. Besides the hands there were stops, queer-shaped
knobs and diminutive buttons, each one marked with a small, neat
number. Little metal flaps fluttered quickly and irregularly, like the
indicators on a telephone switchboard. There was a faint throbbing and
commotion, a suggestion of power at high pressure.
Just for a moment the Doctor tried to realise that he was looking upon
the supreme marvel of human ingenuity. He made an effort to stretch his
brain once more in order to grasp the significance of this paragon of
eight thousand years hence. But he did not succeed. The strain of the
past hour reached its first climax. He began to tremble violently. His
elbow went back with a sharp jerk and smashed three bottles standing on
the shelf behind him. He made little whimpering noises in his throat.
"Oh, God," he whispered, hoarsely, and then again, as though to comfort
himself, "Oh, God."