I
It must remain for ever a question for curious speculation as to
what action might have been taken by Doctor Allingham and Gregg in
conjunction, had they been able to pursue their investigation of the
Clockwork man upon a thorough-going scale; for while their discussions
were taking place the subject of them escaped from his confinement in
the coal cellar.
Indeed, it was hardly to be expected that he would remain there for
very long. As Gregg pointed out, such very delicate mechanism needed
constant attention, and the unexpected was always likely to occur.
There must have been some deeply-rooted automatism that gradually
released the Clockwork man from his sleep; and having awakened, the
grimy walls of the cellar no doubt struck him as distasteful. It was
not to be expected that the Doctor, in his hurry and panic, should have
succeeded in mastering the intricacies of the clock. He had merely
brought about a temporary quiescence which had gradually worked off.
It had to be borne in mind, also, that although the Clockwork man was
dependent upon adjustment in order that he should be made to work in a
right fashion, it was only too plain that he could act independently
and quite wrongly.
The truth is that Doctor Allingham had not been able to summon the
courage to make a further examination of the Clockwork man; and he
had permitted himself to assume that there would be no immediate
developments. So far as was possible he had allowed himself that
very necessary relaxation, and he had insisted upon Gregg sharing
it with him. The Clockwork man was not quite what either of them
had, alternatively, hoped or feared. From Allingham's point of view,
in particular, he was not that bogey of the inhuman fear which his
original conduct had suggested. True, he was still an unthinkable
monstrosity, an awful revelation; but since the discovery of the
printed instructions it had been possible to regard him with a little
more equanimity. The Clockwork man was a figment of the future, but he
was not the whole future.
And now that he had disappeared there was a strong chance that he would
never return, and that his personality and all that was connected with
him would dissolve from memory of man or crystallise into a legend.
That seemed a legitimate consummation of the affair, and it was the
one that Doctor Allingham finally accepted. This visitation, like
other alleged miracles in the past, had a meaning; and it was the
meaning that mattered more than the actual miracle. To discover the
significance of the Clockwork man seemed to Doctor Allingham a task
worthy of the highest powers of man.
The Doctor's conclusion may be taken as a fair expression of his
character. Naturally, the effect of such a preposterous revelation upon
a sluggish and doubting mind would be to arouse it to a kind of furious
defence of all that man has been in the past, and a scarcely less
spirited rejection of that grotesque possibility of the future which
the Clockwork man presented to the ordinary observer. Gregg, on the
other hand, may be excused, on the score of his extreme youthfulness,
for the impetuosity of his actions. His attempt to persuade the editor
of the _Wide World Magazine_ that his version of the affair, put in
the shape of a magazine story, was actually founded on fact, ended in
grotesque failure. His narrative power was not doubted; but he was
advised to work the story up and introduce a little humour before
offering it as a contribution to some magazine that did not vouch for
the truth of its tall stories. As this was beneath Gregg's dignity,
and he could find no one else to take him seriously, he shut up like an
oyster, and just in time to forestall a suspicious attitude on the part
of his friends. It was only years later, and after many experiences in
this world of hard fact and difficult endeavour, that he began to share
the Doctor's view, and to cherish the memory of the Clockwork man as a
legend rich in significance.