The Men in Gray Besiege the House of Nowhere is the crisis in which the Men in Gray turn their assault on time itself into a means of coercing Professor Hora. Their siege is not merely an attempt to reach him: by threatening to contaminate the time he gives to everyone, they make the whole world hostage to their conflict. The danger forces Hora to abandon his hope that people will rid themselves of the time-thieves and entrust Momo with a perilous plan.

Causes and Background

The siege belongs to a wider campaign of taking control of people’s time without their awareness. The Men in Gray understand time as life, and pursue it with calculated patience: they identify people who can serve their designs, wait for the right moment, and encourage habits that appear to be individuals’ own choices. Mr Figaro, for example, is advised to shorten visits with customers, his mother, and Miss Daria, give up singing and reading, and measure his apprentice’s work by the minute. He adopts these measures believing they are his own resolutions. His savings do not become free time; instead, his days seem to shorten, and he grows more restless and determined to save still more.

The pattern spreads beyond one barbershop. Advertising promises that timesaving devices will eventually leave people free to live properly, while slogans praise speed and efficiency. In practice, people become tired and irritable, lose the habit of visiting one another, and cannot bear silence. Work is valued for how much can be completed quickly rather than for pleasure or pride. The city changes along with its inhabitants: old buildings give way to standardized structures, and identical housing developments stretch into straight, monotonous streets. The promise of greater command over time thus accompanies a growing loss of human connection and richness of life. This background establishes what the siege threatens to intensify: not simply theft of hours, but a condition in which life itself is emptied out.

The Threat Behind the Siege

When Momo asks what the Men in Gray are doing, Professor Hora tells her that Nowhere House is surrounded. They are as close as they can get, but cannot enter: if they set foot in Never Lane, they vanish. Their physical exclusion does not make the house safe. Hora explains that they cannot personally reach him, nor can they intercept the time he allots to people, but they can attack the quality of that time and use the consequences to pressure him.

Hora describes the stolen hour-lilies as separated from the people to whom they belong. The flowers cannot die, because they have not truly withered, but they cannot live apart from their owners; they strive to return. He does not know where the Men in Gray keep them. He can only infer that a vast cold store lies underground, where the blossoms are preserved frozen and hard as glass. The Men in Gray take petals from the flowers, dry them until they are gray, and roll them into cigars. They smoke the cigars because living time harms them; only after it has become smoke is the stolen time dead enough to sustain them.

That process gives the siege its larger menace. Hora says that the wall being raised around the house is made of dead time. So long as open sky remains, he can still send people their time in good condition. If smoke closes over them, however, every hour he distributes will be contaminated with the poison of the time-thieves. The threat is therefore an attack on the supply that sustains the Men in Gray and on the living time received by everyone else: the more complete their encirclement, the nearer the danger comes to spreading beyond the house.

Deadly Tedium and the Stakes

Hora names the threatened illness deadly tedium. It begins without an obvious, sudden transformation: a person loses interest, finds everything boring, and becomes increasingly bad-tempered, empty, and dissatisfied. Eventually even those feelings fade. Joy, sorrow, anger, and excitement disappear; the person becomes indifferent, unable to laugh or cry, and incapable of loving anyone or anything. At that point the illness is incurable, and its victim resembles the gray-faced time-thieves themselves.

The explanation links the siege to the city’s quieter deterioration. The timesavers already have more money and better clothes than the people living near the old amphitheater, yet they look sour and tired. They have no one who will listen to them in a way that might make them reasonable or happy, and they regard even leisure as something to optimize. Their avoidance of silence reflects an awareness, however fleeting, that something is happening to their lives. Deadly tedium makes that loss explicit and irreversible: the outcome of the Men in Gray’s plan would not simply be hurried living, but the destruction of emotional life.

Hora's Appeal and the Plan

Hora says he has waited for people to rid themselves of the Men in Gray because people brought them into existence. The growing danger has made waiting impossible, and he cannot act alone. He asks Momo to help, warning that the risk is incalculable and that the world may either begin to live again or stand still forever. Momo agrees, first quietly and then with a firm answer. Her decision marks the turn from explanation to action: she accepts a responsibility whose consequences reach far beyond her own safety.

Hora explains why simply waking him would not solve the problem. The Men in Gray have too much time in reserve to be defeated by waiting out an hour. Once they discover that time has stopped and their cigar supply is interrupted, they will lift the siege and race for their secret store. Momo must follow them and prevent them from reaching it. When their cigars are gone, the Men in Gray will disappear; then she must release every stolen minute, since people must receive their time back before Hora can awaken and the world can come to life again. All of this must happen within a single hour.

The task is daunting enough that Momo initially cannot see how it can be done. The thought that the tortoise may help gives her a small measure of courage, and she resolves to try. Cassiopeia chooses to accompany her, explaining that someone must look after Momo. Hora reassures Momo of his friendship but makes clear that he will not be beside her: his sleep is no ordinary sleep, and she must not follow him or ask where he is going.

Consequences and Significance

Before leaving, Hora gives Momo precise instructions for the moment time stops. She must open both the small door bearing his name and the large bronze door leading into Never Lane; after time has stopped, the doors will be immovable. He tells her that she will know when the moment comes. These practical details connect the siege’s supernatural stakes to a sequence of tasks that Momo must carry out alone, under a strict deadline.

The event ends not with the siege lifted, but with a plan and a transfer of responsibility. The Men in Gray’s inability to enter Never Lane has protected Hora personally, yet their threatened attack on the time he distributes makes that refuge insufficient. Their surrounding wall converts stolen time into a weapon against the world; Hora’s counterplan requires Momo to pursue them, stop them reaching their store, and return what they have stolen. The siege thus changes the scale of the conflict from a struggle over access to Nowhere House into a race to prevent the corruption of human life itself.