"I candidly confess I cannot."
"Well to me it would be unbearable that a man like Williams should know of all my actions. I was not near my clock, not in the same room with it, not on the floor where it stood, from the early afternoon of yesterday. When I conceived the notion of making Miracle Gold I knew I ran a great risk. I thought it might become necessary to prove _affirmatives_ at all events. The proposition of an alibi is an affirmative, the deduction a negative. I told you my clock was my friend. Well, I made it help me in this. I gave out in the private bar of the Hanover that my clock had now become so complicated that I had arranged to connect all the movements, which had hitherto been more or less independent, awaiting removal to a tower. I said I was going to get all my power from one force, weights in the chimney. Hitherto I had said I used springs and weights. I said this change would involve half-an-hour's continual winding every night, with a brief break of a few seconds in the middle of the half hour. The clock was to be wound up by a lever fixed near the window, at which I sat when at work, the only window in the room. Night after night I worked at this lever for half-an-hour, turning round exactly at a quarter-past twelve to nod at the landlord of the Hanover and the people in the private bar. Meanwhile, I was busy constructing two life-sized figures. One of the body of a man in every way unlike me. The other of a man who should be as like me as possible. I have skill, a good deal of skill, in modelling. The face and figure unlike mine were the first finished. Both were made to be moved by the lever, not to move it. I easily timed the head so as to turn at a quarter-past. I inserted in the neck of the figure like myself a movement which would make the head nod before turning away to go on with the winding. You now see my idea?"
"Not quite clearly. But I suspect it."
"Suppose I had to meet one of my clients about the gold, I should make an appointment with him at a quarter-past twelve in Islington, or Wapping, or Wandsworth, or Twickenham. My clock, at twelve o'clock, slowly raised the figure from the floor to the place in which I sat in my chair, turned up the gas, which had been dimmed to the last glimmer that would live, and then released the weight in the chimney and set the figure moving as if working the lever, instead of the lever working it. Thus you see I should have a dozen to swear they saw me in my room at Chelsea, if anything went wrong in my interviews with my clients, or if from any other cause it became necessary for me to prove I was in my workshop between twelve and half-past twelve at night."
"Very ingenious indeed."
"The night before I met you in Welbeck Place, that is to say Wednesday night, I tried my first figure, the figure of the man unlike me."
"May I ask what was the object of this figure? Why had you one that was not like you?"
"To give emphasis to the figure of myself. I at first intended going into the Hanover on Wednesday and declaring that I had been obliged to employ a deputy in case of anything preventing my being able to attend between twelve and half-past. I had intended spending the half hour the figure was visible in the bar, but I changed my mind. I went to the country instead, and imparted as a secret to the landlord that I was to have a deputy that night, and that he was to keep an eye on him and see he did not shirk his work. I knew Williams could no more keep a secret of that kind than fly. I did not want him to keep it. My motive in cautioning him was merely that he might watch closely, for of course I was most anxious that the delusion should be complete and able to bear the test of strict watching from the private bar. I went down to the country partly to be out of the way and partly for another reason I need not mention."
Hanbury started. The excitement of seeing the place burned out, and meeting the dwarf and listening to his strange tale, had prevented him recollecting the connection between Edith Grace and Leigh. "Go on," said Hanbury, wishing the clockmaker to finish before he introduced the name of Edith.
"There is not much more to tell. Owing to a reason I need not mention, I made up my mind on Thursday morning to go on with the production of Miracle Gold. I resolved against my better judgment, and gave the word for the first lot of the gold to be delivered at my place at midnight exactly. You know how my afternoon was spent. While at Mrs. Ashton's, my better judgment and my worse one had a scuffle, and I made up my mind to decide upon nothing that night, and certainly to commit myself to nothing that night. What you would call the higher influence was at work."