pearls.”

153

“The automata are all more or less broken,” I grumbled. “We gained precious little by our trips to Holland and Russia, I think.”

“I don’t call my trip a failure.”

“But your Dutch clock-maker didn’t repair the automata,” I insisted.

“Very true. But he was able to assure me what I had already guessed and hoped might be true–that the antics of the automata, even when the clock was in perfect order, could never have amounted to much. Their various movements, however droll and amusing, were too simple to have much significance.”

“The automata have no significance!” I repeated testily. “Why, I thought the fact that the clock as an automaton clock was precisely the significant point. If the automata amount to no more than a row of pins, how the devil is the clock to tell its secret?”

“My dear Hume,” returned St. Hilary quietly, “they may amount in the end to a row of diamonds. I did not say that the automata have no significance whatever. On the contrary, they are perhaps the principal actors of each scene. But the chorus of each scene is to be found in the bas-reliefs that appear on the bronze plates forming 154the backgrounds. If we grant that, the office of the automaton figures is chiefly to identify the twelve scenes in the bas-relief.”

154

“But if that is true, shall we be able to identify the scenes in the backgrounds when the automatic figures are missing?”

“It will be difficult to do so, certainly. But I believe these automata have a purpose more subtle than that. If my theory is correct, the mad goldsmith would not tell his secret by the uncertain means of a lot of dancing and gesticulating figures. The mechanism would be too intricate and delicate to stand the test of wear and time. It is most probable that the automatic figures, while serving the subsidiary purpose of identifying the various scenes in the backgrounds, are really a bluff. They are a blind to rob the backgrounds of their significance. They are designed to catch the attention of the unwary. The unthinking man, held by the movements of the figures themselves, would look no farther.”

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