"You're simply imagining all these things," said Allingham, hotly, as he rammed tobacco into his pipe.
"I'm not. I really noticed them. Of course, I didn't attach much importance to them at the time, but afterwards, when Arthur Withers was telling his story, all that queer feeling about the strange figure came back to me. It took possession of me. After all, suppose he is a clockwork man?"
"But what is a clockwork man?" demanded Allingham.
"Well, of course I can't explain that exactly, but the term so obviously explains itself. Damn it, he is a clockwork man. He walks, talks, and behaves exactly like one would imagine—"
"Imagine!" burst out Allingham. "Yes, you can imagine such a thing. But you are trying to prove to me that this creature is something that doesn't and can't exist outside your imagination. It won't wash."
"But you agree," said Gregg, unperturbed, "that it might be possible in the future?"
"Oh, well, everything is possible, if you look at it in that light," grudgingly admitted the other.
"Then all we have to do is to prove that the future is involved. Our lunatic must convince us that he is not of our age, that he has, in fact, and probably by mechanical means, found his way back to an age of flesh and blood. So far, we are agreed, for I willingly side with you in your opinion that the Clockwork man could not exist in the present; while I am open to be convinced that he is a quite credible invention of the remote future."
He broke off, for at that moment a car drew up in front of the window, and the burly form of Inspector Grey stepped down in company with two constables and a lad of about fifteen, whom both Gregg and the doctor recognised as an inhabitant of the neighbouring village of Bapchurch.
III