He threw the hat into infinity and produced a parrot cage with parrot.
"Stop it!" the Curate gasped. "My heart, you know—I have been warned—sudden shocks." He staggered to the wall and groped blindly for an emergency exit, which he knew to be there somewhere. He found it, forced the door open and fell limply upon the pavement outside.
The Clockwork man turned slowly and surveyed the prostrate figure. "A rudimentary race," he soliloquised, with his finger nosewards, "half blind, and painfully restricted in their movements. Evidently they have only a few senses—five at the most." He passed out into the street, carefully avoiding the body. "They have a certain freedom," he continued, still nursing his nose, "within narrow limits. But they soon grow limp. And when they fall down, or lose balance, they have no choice but to embrace the earth."
He waddled along, with his head stuck jauntily to one side. "I have nothing to fear," he added, "from such a rudimentary race of beings."
V
"Evidently," his thoughts ran on, "they must regard me as an extraordinary being. And, of course, I am—and far superior. I am a superior being suffering from a nervous breakdown."
He stopped himself abruptly, as though this view of the matter solved a good many problems.
"I must get myself seen to," he mused, "because, of course, that accounts for everything; my lapse into this defunct order of things and my inability to move about freely in the usual, multiform manner. And it accounts for my absurd behaviour just now."
He turned slowly, as though considering whether to return and explain matters to the curate. "I must have frightened him," he whispered, almost audibly, "but I only wanted to show him, and the parrot cage happened to be handy."
He trundled forward again and lurched into the middle of the street.