in your sleep. Then he applied some kind of poultice – a numbing agent, he called it, to keep the pain at bay while the break begins to heal. He can explain it better than I, and will do so, I am sure – but first, you and I must have a chat, sir. I dare say you can guess the subject.’
‘My head is somewhat fuzzy,’ I temporized. ‘If you would enlighten me …’ It seemed safest to let him take the lead.
‘Ah, Herr Gray, you think I am angry with you because you climbed the clock tower. I assure you, I am not. The clock, as you see, has ways of protecting itself.’
‘That is what Inge said,’ I exclaimed. ‘But surely you can’t believe—’
‘That one of Herr Wachter’s mechanisms might defend itself?’ he broke in. ‘Come, Herr Gray. Do you mean to tell me, after all you have seen, all you have experienced, that you could doubt it?’
I let this pass. Frankly, I did not wish to dwell on the possibility, which I found disturbing. ‘If not that, then what?’
‘Why, if not the effect, what else but the cause? That is to say, the reason you climbed the tower in the first place. What was it, Herr Gray? Something you saw, perhaps? Something out of the ordinary?’
At this, I had to laugh. ‘Out of the ordinary? Herr Doppler, I have seen little else since I arrived here!’ Then, mindful of Corinna’s evident desire that I keep secret what we had seen, I asked him, ‘Have you not spoken to your daughter?’
He frowned. ‘Rather, she has spoken to me. And confessed that it was all her doing – that she tempted you into making the climb with the promise of a kiss. I could well believe her capable of such a wicked promise, the minx, but the fact that she volunteered the information freely makes me suspicious. I know my daughter, sir. She is hiding something. And I think you know what it is.’
I had no intention of revealing what I had seen. I did not understand the significance of it, but I had no doubt that it was significant, for not only Herr Doppler but Dr Immelman and even Adolpheus had pressed me on the matter. In any case, it was sufficient that Corinna wished me to say nothing of it.
‘I would not have you think badly of your daughter,’ I told Herr Doppler. ‘She is only trying to protect me, and in her innocence does not understand the injury she does herself. The truth is, it was I who set the terms for that climb, not Corinna.’
‘You, sir?’
‘I had been pressing her for a kiss all morning. But she had resisted my every advance. At last, as we stood before the clock tower, watching as the automatons crossed the stage above us, I secured her promise – reluctantly given, I assure you, and only out of a desire to put an end to my importuning – of a kiss in exchange for my climbing the tower and planting a kiss of my own upon the cheek of a wooden maiden there.’
‘A wooden maiden?’ Herr Doppler echoed, his eyes narrowing. ‘What maiden is this?’
I wondered if I had said too much and inadvertently revealed what I had hoped to keep secret. I saw no recourse but to press on. ‘Just one of the automatons,’ I answered with a shrug. ‘I hope I do not give offence, Herr Doppler, but to speak frankly, I had expected better. So wondrous are the outsides of Herr Wachter’s timepieces that I had thought anything emerging from within them must be equally wondrous. But the figures I saw seemed to have been executed in haste, and otherwise were no different than hundreds of others I have encountered in my travels.’
‘Ah, so now you know our darkest secret,’ Doppler said with a chuckle, as if relieved. ‘The truth is, Herr Wachter had nothing to do with those figures. When it came to such things, he preferred to work on a smaller scale, as with the dragon in Inge’s cuckoo clock. There he lavished the full measure of his genius. Do not misunderstand – the clock tower is indeed his masterpiece. But its size and complexity were such that he felt compelled to delegate certain aspects of its fabrication, like the automatons, to others … or so I was told and do believe. The truth of it seems evident in the craftsmanship, as you say. So,’