I put my mouth to the slit, and we talked together like Pyramus and Thisbe.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certain.”
“He isn’t lurking round the corner somewhere, waiting to pop out?”
“No. He’s gone.”
The door opened and an embittered Ukridge emerged.
“It’s a little hard!” he said, querulously. “You would scarcely credit it, Corky, but all that fuss was about a measly one pound two and threepence for a rotten little clockwork man that broke the first time I wound it up. Absolutely the first time, old man! It’s not as if it had been a tandem bicycle, an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and a magic lantern.”
I could not follow him.
“Why should a clockwork man be a tandem bicycle and the rest of it?”