ONE: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[Pg 166] 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."You can do as you're told; understand?" I understood.
FORE:Then came the lunch, in the town-hall near by, at which the bishop did his duty, and the guests theirs. There was a table and a raised dais for the principal of those, and on the floor of the hall a dozen others for the less distinguished. Close by against the wall were sitting those of Keelings staff who had been bidden to the ceremony, and he had already satisfied himself that Norah was there. Then at the close of lunch came Lord Inverbrooms speech, and at the close of that the sentence for which Mrs Keeling had been waiting.
FORE:But Gregg had the sense to admit to himself that his generalisation was no more than a faint aurora hovering around the rumoured dawn of the future. It was necessary, in the first place, to posit an imperfect thinking apparatus. After all, the Clockwork man was still a mystery to be solved, and even if he failed to justify a single theory born of merely human conjecture, there still remained the exhilarating task of finding out what actually he was and how he had come to earth.
FORE:"Would you object," said the Clockwork man, "to having all your difficulties solved for you?"
