THREE:For a moment Allingham's face was a study in bewilderment. He tried to speak, but only succeeded in producing an absurd snigger. Then he tried to laugh outright, and was forced into rapid speech. "Well, what did I say?[Pg 62] The whole thing is preposterous. I'm afraid, inspector, we've troubled you for nothing. The fact is, somebody has been guilty of a monstrous hoax."Late that night he was sitting alone in his library. The evening had passed precisely as it always did when he and his wife and Alice were by themselves. Lady Keeling had been neither more nor less fatuous than usual, Alice, the slippers being off her mind, had played a couple of games of backgammon with him, and had shown herself as futile an adversary as ever.
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THREE:
THREE:Falling in love had revealed the matter in a very different light. It was quite worth while yielding to fashion in order to win the affection of Rose Lomas. And so he had imitated his rivals. He cast aside all ties that revealed their linings, trimmed up the cuffs of his shirts; overcame with an effort a natural repugnance to wearing his best clothes; and generally submitted himself to that daily supervision of superficial matters which he could now regard as the prelude to happy hours. And Rose, interested in that conquest of himself for her sake, had soon learned how much there was beneath the polished surface to capture her heart.But you never gave them another drink, Mr Silverdale? she said.
THREE:That was Gregg's dimly conceived theory about the mystery, although, of course, he read into the interpretation a good deal of his own speculations. His imagination seized upon the clock as the possible symbol of a new counterpoint in human affairs. In his mind he saw man growing through the ages, until at last, by the aid of this mechanism, he was able to roll back the skies and reveal the vast other worlds that lay beyond, the unthinkable mysteries that lurked between the stars, all that had been sealed up in the limited brain of man since creation. From that extreme postulate it would be necessary to work backward, until some reasonable hypothesis could be found to explain the working[Pg 111] of the clock mechanism. That difficulty, even, might be overcome if only an opportunity occurred to examine this strange being from the future, or if he could be prevailed upon to explain matters himself.