It is a curious thing, but this question had affected me. I should have thought that my face was quite calm. What motive had I not to be easy in my mind? I was annoyed, that was all. I simply was asking myself what organ was suffering in this great body (as the Professor had called it) and not being able to find anything, and it being about to stop altogether, I was annoyed, that was all.
In vain I listened with a carefully trained ear to the explosion, clickings, dull-sounding knocks; no characteristic sound revealed to me the stiffness of valves or cranks.
“I bet it is the clutch which has gone wrong,” I cried, “and yet the engine is all right.”
And then Emma said, “Oh, Nicholas, do look! Should that thing there move?”
“Ah! I told you so. There, you see!”
She had pointed to the clutch-pedal, which was moving by itself, while the jolts of the car coincided with its motions.
“That was the trouble.”
Whilst my eyes were fixed on the pedal, it remained pushed right over.
The car, unclutched, stopped. I was going to get out of it, when it set off again in a most brutal way. The pedal had come back. A certain uneasiness tormented me; it is certain nothing is so annoying as a car that will not work; but all the same, I do not remember ever having been so curiously affected by engine-trouble.