The Clockmaker, Chapter Four: What the Pendulum Knew

The man with no name came back on the first Sunday in November.

Ottilie was alone in the shop again. She had the drawings from the drawer spread across the bench, weighted down at the corners with old movements, and she was halfway through the plans for the clock with no hands when the bell rang and she looked up and knew him at once.

He did not look at her. He looked at the black clock, running forwards on the shelf where she had put it.

"It turned," he said.

"On Thursday. At seven minutes past midnight."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked younger, or perhaps only less tired. "Then she was right," he said. "Margit was right, and I was wrong, and I have been wrong for sixty years."