"Well, I admit I was rather mystified by that hat and wig. But when you come to rationalise the thing, what is there in it?" The Doctor was taking long strides and flourishing his leather gloves in the air. "How could such a thing be? How can anybody in his right senses entertain the notion that Dunn Brothers are still in existence two thousand years hence? And the Clarkson business. It's absurd on the face of it."
"Even an absurdity," said Gregg, quietly, "may contain the positive truth. I admit it's ludicrous, but we both agree that it's inexplicable. We have to fall back on conjecture. To my mind there is something suggestive about that persistency in the future of things familiar to us. Suppose they have found a way of keeping things going, just as they are? Hasn't the aim of man always been the permanence of his institutions? And wouldn't it be characteristic of man, as we know him to-day, that he should hold on to purely utilitarian things, conveniences? In this age we sacrifice everything to utility. That's because we're getting somewhere in a hurry. Modern life is the last lap in man's race against Time."
He paused, as though to adjust the matter in his mind. "But suppose Time stopped. Or, rather, suppose man caught up with Time, raced the universal enemy, tracked him to his lair? That would account for the names being the same. Dunn still breathes and Clarkson endures, or their descendants. At any rate, the idea of them persists. Perhaps this clock that they wear abolished death and successive generations. Of course, it seems like a joke to us, but we've got to drop our sense of humour for the time being."
"But how could it be?" exclaimed Allingham, kicking a loose stone in his walk. "This clock, I mean. It's—" He fumbled hopelessly for words with which to express new doubts. "What is this clock?"
"It's an instrument," rejoined Gregg, leaning over the side of the car. "Evidently it has some sort of effect upon the fundamental processes of the human organism. That's clear, to me. Probably it replaces some of the ordinary functions and alters others. One gets a sort of glimmer—of an immense speeding up of the entire organism, and the brain of man developing new senses and powers of apprehension. They would have all sorts of second sights and subsidiary senses. They would feel their way about in a larger universe, creep into all sorts of niches and corners unknown to us, because of their different construction."
"Yes, yes, I can follow all that," said Allingham, biting his moustache, "but let's talk sense."
"In a matter like this," put in Gregg, "sense is at a premium. What we have to do is to consult our intuitions."
Allingham frowned. His intuitions, nowadays, were few and far between.
"When you get to my age, Gregg, you'll have something else to do besides consult your intuitions. The fact is, you want all these wonderful things to happen. You have a flair for the unexpected, like all children and adolescents. But I tell you, the Clockwork man is a myth, and I think you ought to respect my opinion."