"If you open the lid," explained the Clockwork man (and at the sound of
that human voice the doctor jumped violently), "you will see certain
stops, marked with numbers."
Obedient, in spite of himself, the Doctor discovered a minute hinge
and swung open the glass lid. The palpitating clock, with its stir of
noises slightly accentuated, lay exposed to his touch.
"Stop XI," continued the Clockwork man, in tones of sharp instruction.
"Press hard. Then wind Y 4 three times."
Slowly, with a wildly beating heart, the Doctor inserted a trembling
finger among the interstices of those multitudinous stops and hands,
and as slowly withdrew it again. He could not do this thing. For
one thing, his finger was too large. It was a ridiculously clumsy
instrument for so fine a purpose. What if he failed? Pressed a knob too
hard or set a hand spinning in the wrong direction? The least blunder--
"I can't do it," he gasped, "I can't really. You must--excuse me."
"Be quick," said the Clockwork man, in a squeaky undertone, "something
is going to happen."
So it came about that the Doctor's final action was hurried and
ill-considered. It seemed to him that he must have committed some kind
of assault upon the mechanism. Actually, he succeeded in pressing the
knob marked XI, and the immediate result was a sort of muffled ringing
sound arising from somewhere in the depths of the Clockwork man's
organism.
"Registered," exclaimed the latter, triumphantly. "Now, the hand."
The Doctor found the hand and tried to twist it very slowly and
carefully. He had expected the thin piece of metal to resist his touch;
but it swung round with a fatal facility--five and a half times!
The Clockwork man suddenly turned round. Immediately afterwards the
Doctor became aware of a series of loud popping noises, accompanied by
the sound of tearing and rending. Simultaneously, some hard object hit
him just over the eye, and the walls and ceiling of the little room
were struck sharply by something violently expelled. And then he felt
himself being pushed gently away by some pressure that was steadily
insisting upon more space.
It was an effect in startling disproportion to the cause. Or, at least,
so it seemed to the Doctor, who was, of course, totally ignorant about
the mechanism with which he was experimenting.
"Reverse!" exclaimed the Clockwork man, in thick, suety tones,
"reverse."
Already he was several times stouter than his original self. He had
burst all his buttons--which accounted for the sudden explosions--and
his clothes were split all the way down, back and front. Great pouches
and three new chins appeared upon his face, and lower down there was
visible an enormous stomach.
The Doctor seized hold of the other's collar and turned the huge body
round. His hand fumbled wildly among the stops.
"Which one?" he gasped, his face livid with fright. "Tell me what to
do. In heaven's name, do you expect me to _know_?"
"Z 5," came the faint rejoinder, "and reverse Y 4--most
important--reverse Y 4."
It followed upon this experiment that the Clockwork man presently
emitted a faint, quavering protest. He had certainly dwindled in bulk.
His clothes hung upon him, and there was a distressing feebleness of
frame. Slowly it dawned upon the Doctor that the face peering up at him
was that of a very old and decrepit individual. Painful lines crossed
his forehead, and there were rheumy lodgements in the corner of each
eye. The change was rapidly progressive.
By this time the Doctor's condition of hysteria had given way to a sort
of desperate recklessness. He had somehow to restore the Clockwork man
to some semblance of passable humanity. He pressed stops and twisted
hands with an entire disregard for the occasional instructions
bellowed at him by the unfortunate object of his random experiments.
He felt that the very worst could scarcely surpass what had already
taken place. And it was obvious that the Clockwork man had but the
haziest notions about his own mechanism. Evidently he was intended to
be adjusted by some other person. He was not, in that sense, autonomous.
It was also manifest that the Clockwork man was capable of almost
limitless adaptability. Several of the stops produced only slight
changes or the first beginnings of some fundamental alteration of
structure. Usually these changes were of a sufficiently alarming
character to cause the Doctor immediately to check them by further
experiments. The Clockwork man seemed to be an epitome of everything
that had ever existed. After one experiment he developed gills. Another
produced frightful atavistic snortings. There was one short-lived
episode of a tail.
By the end of another five minutes the Doctor had sacrificed
all scruple. His fingers played over that human keyboard with a
recklessness that was born of sheer horror of his own actions. He
almost fancied that he might suddenly arrive at some kind of mastery
of the stunning instrument. He alternated between that delusion
and trusting blindly to chance. It was indeed by accident that he
discovered and pressed hard home a large stop marked simply O.
The next second he found himself contemplating what was apparently an
empty heap of clothes lying upon the floor at his feet.
The Clockwork man had vanished!
"_Ah!_" screamed the Doctor, dancing round the room, and forgetting
even God in his agony. "What have I done? What have I _done_?"
He knelt down and searched hastily among the clothes. There was a lump
moving about very slightly, in the region of the waistcoat, a lump that
was strangely soft to the touch. Then he felt the hard surface of the
clock. Before he could remove the mass of clothing there broke upon the
stillness a strange little cry, to the Doctor curiously familiar. It
was the wail of an infant, long-drawn and pitiful.
When the Doctor found him, he appeared to be about six weeks old, and
rapidly growing smaller and smaller.
Only the promptest and most fortuitous action upon the Doctor's part
averted something inconceivably disastrous.