ONE:Frank gave another swing of his hat and another cheer. The Doctor and Fred united their voices to his, and with a hearty shout all around, they concluded the ceremony connected with their arrival in Japan.
ONE:"My dear," he gasped, as he slid into the seat reserved for him next to his wife, "I couldn't help it. Someone stole my hat and wig."As the doctor concentrated upon a delayed tea, his mind lapsed into its usual condition of fretful scepticism. Gregg's idea that the Clockwork man represented a mystery, if not a miracle, enraged him. At forty a man does not readily welcome discoveries that may upset his own world of accepted facts, and Allingham had long since given up the habit of following the latest results of scientific investigation. Years ago he had made his own small researches, only to discover that others were making them at the same time. He had had his gleamings in common with all the other students of his year. Everybody was having gleamings then of vast possibilities in medical science, especially in the direction of nervous pathology and the study of morbid diseases resulting from highly complex methods of living. There had been much sound work, a good deal of irresponsible mud-raking, and, in Allingham's case, a growing suspicion that the human organism was not standing very well the strains imposed upon it by modern civilisation. He had wondered then if some experiments would not be made some day in[Pg 45] the pursuit of evolutionary doctrines as applied to physiological progressbut that had been the most ephemeral of all his gleams.
SCENE FROM A JAPANESE COMEDY.--LOVE-LETTER DISCOVERED. SCENE FROM A JAPANESE COMEDY.LOVE-LETTER DISCOVERED."We don't know positively whether there are a million people in Canton or not. We took the figures from the guide-book, just as everybody[Pg 410] else takes them, and we want to acknowledge our indebtedness to it. The guide-book is very useful in a strange country, as it tells you in a few minutes what you might spend hours or days in learning. It gives you an outline which you must fill in for yourself by practical observation; and[Pg 411] unless you have it with you, there is a great deal that you may miss, if your time is limited, and you are compelled to do your sight-seeing rapidly.I want those entered by hand in the ledger, he said. You can use that table over there in the window. When that is finished you can go.The voice merged into the buzz of autumn noises, and footsteps and other conversation, but it had stood apart and distinct. Keeling knew he recognised the voice, but for the moment could not put a name to its owner; it was a womans voice, very distinct and pleasant in tone. And in order to satisfy a sudden, unreasonable curiosity, he got up from his seat and, looking out down the path over the hornbeam hedge, saw but a few yards down the path the head of his book{87} department and his sister, the very efficient secretary and typewriter whom he had engaged that morning. Their heads were turned to each other and there was no doubt whatever about their identity."Like whom?"
