It was long past noon when I was awakened by St. Hilary.

“Well,” I asked sleepily, “have you had any luck?”

“None whatever. The duke’s belongings were packed. His rooms were dismantled. If you remember, he has been living at Bellagio the past few days. He has a villa there.”

“So you have no trace of the missing papers?”

“No trace,” he replied gloomily. “But tell me of your own adventures with the duke.”

“It appears,” he said ruefully, when I had finished, “that the duke has had the advantage of us after all. But at least we have the clock.”

“Yes,” I echoed sarcastically, “we have the clock. But it seems to me that the childish contrivances one sees sold on the boulevards of Paris for ten sous are as ingenious. I have heard it strike four of the hours, and each hour’s results were more disappointing than the last.”

“Did you expect to find its secret on the surface, like the pebbles on the sea-shore? There 153are pebbles on the shore, yes. But, my friend, a poet has said we must dive for the pearls.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That is a really ingenious theory, St. Hilary,” I said admiringly.

“Be sure of this,” replied the dealer complacently, “the riddle that man has been ingenious enough to devise, man is ingenious enough to solve.”

155“Granting always that it is a consistent riddle.”

“And I have enough faith in my goldsmith to believe that,” said St. Hilary obstinately. “But it is three minutes to one. The clock is about to strike.”

We watched the first of the doors open, the circular platform pushed out. A headless figure stood motionless............