"Now, that's a good idea. We might arrive at something by comparison. I never thought of that." He grasped the mustard pot again and tried to arrange certain matters in his mind. "It's a little difficult to know where to begin," he temporised.
"Begin at the end, if you like," suggested the Clockwork man, affably. "It's all the same to me. First and last, upside or inside, front or back—it all conveys the same idea to me."
"We are creatures of action," hazarded the Doctor, with the air of a man embarking upon a long mental voyage, "we act from certain motives. There is a principle known as Cause and Effect. Everything is related. Every action has its equal and opposite re-action. Nobody can do anything, or even think anything, without producing some change, however slight, in the general flow of things. Every movement that we make, almost every thought that passes through our minds, starts another ripple upon the surface of time, upon this endless stream of cause and effect."
"Ah," interrupted the Clockwork man, placing a finger to the side of his nose, "I begin to understand. You work upon a different principle, or rather an antiquated principle. You see, all that has been solved now. The clock works all that out in advance. It calculates ahead of our conscious selves. No doubt we still go through the same processes, sub-consciously, all such processes that relate to Cause and Effect. But we, that is, ourselves, are the resultant of such calculations, and the only actions we are conscious of are those which are expressed as consequents."
Allingham passed a hand across his forehead. "It all seems so feasible," he remarked, "once you grasp the mechanism. But what I don't understand—"
Here, however, the discussion came to an abrupt conclusion, for something was happening to the Clockwork man.
THE CLOCK