“Oh!  So you know that too, do you?” said Mimi blandly.  “Mr. Prohack, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying that you’re most frightfully clever.  I did give the keys back to Mrs. Slipstone a long time before the clock stopped striking, but you see, Mr. Charles had taken an impression of the tower key in clay, so that last night we were able to go up with an electric torch and our own key.  The clock is a very old one, and Mr. Charles removed a swivel or something—­I forget what he called it, but he seems to understand everything about every kind of machinery.  He says it would take a tremendous long time to get another swivel, or whatever it is, cast, even if it ever could be cast without a pattern, and that you’ll be safe for at least six months, even if we don’t rely on the natural slowness of the Established Church to do anything really active.  You see it isn’t as if the clock wasn’t going.  It’s showing the time all right, and that will be sufficient to keep the rector and the church-wardens quiet.  It keeps up appearances.  Of course if the clock had stopped entirely they would have had to do something....  You don’t seem very pleased, dear Mr. Prohack.  We thought you’d be delighted.  We did it all for you.”

“Did you indeed!” said Mr. Prohack ruthlessly.  “And did you think of the riskiness of what you were doing?  There’ll be a most appalling scandal, certainly police-court proceedings, and I shall be involved, if it comes to light.”

“But it can’t come to light!” Mimi exploded.

“And yet it came to my light.”

“Yes, I expect Mr. Charles was so proud that he couldn’t help telling you some bits about it.  But nobody else can know.  Even if Mrs. Slipstone lets on to the sexton, the sexton will never let on because if he did he’d lose his place.  The sexton will always have to deny that he parted with the keys even for a moment.  It will be the loveliest mystery that ever was, and all the police in the world won’t solve it.  Of course, if you aren’t pleased, I’m very sorry.”

“It isn’t a question of not being pleased.  The breath is simply knocked out of me—­that’s what it is!  Whatever possessed you to do it?”

“But something had to be done, Mr. Prohack.  Everybody in the house was terribly upset about you.  You couldn’t sleep because of the clock, and you said you never would sleep.  Mrs. Prohack was at her wit’s end.”

“Everybody in the house was terribly upset about me!  This is the first I’ve heard of anybody being terribly upset about me.  I thought that everybody except me had forgotten all about the infernal clock.”

“Naturally!” said Mimi, with soothing calmness.  “Mrs. Prohack quite rightly forbade any mention of the clock in your presence.  She said the best thing to do was to help you to forget it by never referring to it, and we all agreed with her.  But it weighed on us dreadfully.  And something really had to be done.”

Mr. Prohack was not unimpressed by this revelation of the existence of a social atmosphere which he had never suspected.  But he was in no mood for compromise.