It could be proved beyond a shadow of doubt, and by reference to all known laws of anatomy, that he did not exist.
His internal organs, heard in action through a stethoscope, resembled the noise made by the humming of a dynamo at full pitch.
And yet this wildly incredible being, this unspeakable travesty of all living organisms, this thing most opposite to humanity, actually breathed and conversed. He was a sentient being. He was more than man, for he could be turned into something else by simply pressing a stop. Properly understood, there was no doubt that the mechanism permitted the owner of it to run up and down the evolutionary scale of species according to adjustment.
There were one or two other details which the Doctor had not failed to observe.
The Clockwork man had no apparent sex.
His body was scarred and disfigured, as though many surgical operations had been performed upon it.
There was some organ faintly approximating to the human heart, but it was infinitely more powerful, and the valvular action was exceedingly complex.
Fitted into the clock, in such a way that they could be removed, were a series of long tubes with valve-like endings. The Doctor had removed one or two of these and examined them very closely, but he could not arrive at any idea of their purpose.
At every point in his examination the Doctor had found himself confronted by an elaboration, in some cases a flat contradiction, of ordinary human functions. He could not grasp even the elementary premises of a state of affairs that had made the Clockwork man possible.