"Please don't begin on the clock again, my poor Arthur! You ought to forget it. You know how bad it is for you to dwell on it. It gets on your nerves and you start imagining all sorts of things, until, of course, there's no chance of you sleeping. If you keep on like this you'll make me feel a perfect criminal for taking the house. You don't suspect it, but I've several times wished we never had taken it—I've been so upset about your nervous condition."
"I was merely saying," Mr. Prohack insisted, "that our fat visitor, who apparently has enormous seductive power over sacristans, had noticed about the clock just as I had, and she thought—"
Eve interrupted him by approaching swiftly and putting her hands on his shoulders, as he had put his hands on her shoulders a little while earlier, and gazing with supplication at him.
"Please, please!" she besought him. "To oblige me. Do drop the church-clock. I know what it means for you."
Mr. Prohack turned away, broke into uproarious and somewhat hysterical laughter, and left the bedroom, having perceived to his amazement that she thought the church-clock was undermining his sanity.
Going to his study, he rang the bell there, and Brool, with features pale and drawn, obeyed the summons. The fact that his sanity was suspect, however absurdly, somehow caused Mr. Prohack to assume a pontifical manner of unusual dignity.
"Is Miss Warburton up yet?"
"No, sir. One of the servants knocked at her door some little time ago, but received no answer."
"She must be wakened, and I'll write a note that must be given to her immediately."
Mr. Prohack wrote: "Please dress at once and come to my study. I want to see you about the church-clock. A.P." Then he waited, alternately feeling the radiator and warming his legs at the newly-lit wood fire. He was staggered by the incredible turn of events, and he had a sensation that nothing was or ever would be secure in the structure of his environment.