Chapter VI Summary

The narrator returns to Sergeant Pluck and Gilhaney, and the three set out to look for Gilhaney's bicycle. Pluck informs the narrator that the third policeman, Policeman Fox, only comes to the barracks in the middle of the night and is never seen. He seems to have gone mad after talking with MacCruiskeen for an hour one day. The three walk along the road, and Pluck inexplicably knows in which bush and tree to locate parts of Gilhaney's bicycle, while Pluck and Gilhaney dispute different bicycle features. Finally, Pluck locates the bicycle in the underbrush, and Gilhaney rides off.

The narrator is amazed at the ease with which Pluck located the missing cycle, and Pluck explains that he stole it himself to slow Gilhaney's slow change into a bicycle. Pluck explains "Atomic Theory," which states that everything is made of atoms...