He walked out with him into the square Gothic hall with its hideous tiles, its castellated chimney-piece, its painted wheelbarrow, its card-bearing crocodile, and observed Propert going towards the green-baize door that led to the kitchen passage.
FORE: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.And then, as Gregg took a leisurely stride towards the door, as though to investigate matters on his own, the Doctor caught hold of his sleeve. "Don't do that. Listen, first, to what I have to tell you. I rather fancy it will take the edge off your curiosity."
"The fact is, I need a thorough overhauling. I'm all to pieces. Nothing seems right. I oughtn't to creak like this. I'm sure there's a screw loose somewhere.""No," said Arthur, and he glanced at the Clockwork man's bald forehead and noticed something peculiar about the construction of the back of his head; there seemed to be[Pg 78] some object there which he could not see because they were facing each other. "I'm sorry," he continued, looking rather hopelessly around him, "perhaps we could find them somewhere.""Not by any means," was the reply; "thousands of them are not able to speak a word when they go abroad, but they gradually pick up the language of the country to which they go. Not all of them go to America or other English-speaking lands; many have gone to Cuba, Peru, and Brazil, where there was no need of a knowledge of English. Spanish and Portuguese are the only tongues in use there, and many an emigrant never took the trouble to learn a word of them.""Frank and Fred."