Chapter IV Summary

The philosopher de Selby believes that movement is a hallucination and that life is a series of still moments, much like a film. At one point, he claims to have made a journey using photos, clocks, barometers, and a gaslight regulator. Meanwhile, the narrator's journey is coming to its next stop at the oddly one-dimensional looking police barracks. As the narrator approaches the building, it seems to have some strange depth, but it maintains the appearance of an optical illusion of some sort, as do the policemen inside.

The first policeman the narrator meets, Sergeant Pluck, assumes he is inquiring about a missing bicycle. The sergeant is dumbfounded to find that the narrator has no bicycle and further perplexed that the narrator has no name. Pluck assumes that the narrator is the son of another man he once knew who had...