"Why yes, I suppose it does," Allingham admitted, not knowing what else to say.
The Clockwork man sighed, a long, whistling sigh. "I wish you would mend me. I'm all wrong you know. Something has got out of place, I think. My clock won't work properly."
"Your clock," echoed the doctor.
"It's rather difficult to explain," the Clockwork man continued, "but so far as I remember, doctors were people who used to mend human beings before the days of the clock. Now they are called mechanics. But it amounts to the same thing."
"If you will come with me to my surgery," the Doctor suggested, with as much calmness as he could assume, "I'll do my best for you."
The Clockwork man bowed stiffly. "Thank you. Of course, I'm a little better than I was, but my ears still flap occasionally."
The Doctor scarcely heard this. He had turned aside and stooped down in order to rewind the engine of his car. When he looked up again he beheld an extraordinary sight.
The Clockwork man was standing by his side, a comic expression of pity and misgiving animating his crude features. With one hand he was softly stroking the damaged bonnet of the car.
"Poor thing," he was saying, "It must be suffering dreadfully. I am so sorry."
Allingham paused in the turning of the handle and stared, aghast, at his companion. There was no mistaking the significance of the remark, and it had been spoken in tones of strange tenderness. Rapidly there swept across the Doctor's mind a sensation of complete conviction. If there was any further proof required of the truth of Gregg's conjecture, surely it was expressed in this apparently insane and yet obviously sincere solicitude on the part of the Clockwork man for an inanimate machine? He recognised in the mechanism before him a member of his own species!