"Perhaps you agree with Mrs. Masters?" said Allingham, as soon as the door was closed.It was certainly very odd. The doctor was so struck by something altogether wrong about the figure, something so suggestive of a pathological phenomenon, that he almost forgot his annoyance and remained watching it with an unlighted cigarette between his lips.
THREE:But what could it mean? Gregg rather prided himself upon the resiliency of his mind, but not all the elasticity of which he was capable could enable him to overcome a sudden sense of uneasiness. Was the Clockwork man, after all, no more than a very elaborate and highly complex puppet? But how could that be, since he breathed and spoke and gave every sign of the possession of an individual consciousness? Considered in this new light he was even more difficult to explain.
As the car sped swiftly along, Gregg sat back with folded arms and gazed upwards at the now crystalline skies, wondering, as he had never wondered before, about that incomprehensible immensity which for centuries of successive generations man had silently respected. No authoritative voice had ever claimed to penetrate that supreme mystery. Priests had evoked the gods from that starry depth, poets had sung of the swinging hemispheres, scientists had traced comets and knew the quality of each solar earth; but still that vast arch spanned all the movements of crawling mankind, and closed him in like a basin placed over a colony of ants."And before the words had done echoing he called out 'There she blows' again, and a moment after again. That meant that he had seen two more whales.The Doctor paused in his walk. How strange that Lilian should say that! It almost seemed as though she must have heard about the Clockwork man!"We found another fine bridge on this part of the road, and our guide said it was called the 'Bridge of the Cloudy Hills,' because the clouds frequently hung over the hills in the distance. The Chinese are very fond[Pg 384] of fanciful names for their bridges and temples, and frequently the name has very little to do with the structure itself. I am told that there is a bridge in the south of China with exactly the same name as this, and not far from it is another called the 'Bridge of the Ten Thousand Ages.' We have seen the 'Temple of Golden Happiness' and the 'Bridge of Long Repose.' We shall be on the lookout for the 'Temple of the Starry Firmament,' and probably shall not be long in finding it. Strange that a people so practical as the Chinese should have so much poetry in their language!And the other noise, the purring and whirring, resumed this time so close to Arthur that he instinctively, and half in fear, arose from the stile and looked around him. But the tall hedges sweeping away on either side[Pg 77] made it difficult to see anyone who might be approaching under their cover. There was a pause. Then a different sound.[Pg 211]
