“No bed? It is not possible that you have already brought back our clock?”
“It is not only possible, it is true. I returned this evening in time to get your telegram and to meet you.”
“You have had it repaired in a week?”
“Yes; so far as it could be repaired.”
“Then there could not have been much the matter with it.”
“As it happened, there was not.”
“Then it seems to me that your trip to Amsterdam was not so very remarkable after all?” I grumbled.
“Sometimes,” quietly replied St. Hilary, “one has to go to a great deal of trouble and expense to get a merely negative result. Sometimes it is necessary to find out simply what a thing is not.”
“And have you found out that it is not, after all, an automaton clock?”
“My dear fellow, be reasonable. In the first place, this clock had to be set going. It was too intricate a piece of mechanism to entrust to any blundering workman. Are you going to find fault because it has been set going without any trouble or delay? Every wheel of its works had to be taken apart.”