A QUARTER PAST TWELVE.

Oscar Leigh sat in the dark on the last step but one of the stairs of his house, awaiting the arrival of John Timmons. It was close to the appointed hour. He had spent the interval in his workshop with the clock. He had one of his knees drawn up close to his body, his elbow rested on his knee, his long bearded chin in the palm of that hand. It was pitch dark. Nothing could be seen, absolutely nothing. For all the human eye could learn an inch from it might be a plate of iron or blind space.

"My mother cannot live for ever," whispered the dwarf--like many people who live much in the solitude of cities he had the habit of communing with himself aloud--"and then all will be blank, all will be dark as this place round me. Where shall I turn then? Whom shall I speak my heart to? I designed my clock to be a companion, a friend, a confidant, a solace, a triumph; it is becoming a tyrant and a scourge. It is cruel that my mother should grow old. Why should not things stop as they are now? But we are all on our way to death. We are all on our way out of the world to make room for those who are coming in. No sooner do we grow to full years and strive to form our hearts than we discover we are only lodgers in this world and that those we like are leaving our neighbourhood very soon, and that while we cannot go with them we cannot remain either.

"A man must have something to think of besides himself; a deformed dwarf must never think of himself at all, unless he thinks great things of himself. I am depressed to-night. I have been living too fast all day. What a long day it has been. I told that young whelp, Hanbury, I should show him something more wonderful than Miracle Gold. I took him with me to Grimsby Street, and the marvellous likeness between those two girls took the sight out of his eyes and the speech out of his mouth, and the little brains he has out of his head. Then I go with him to see her who is the other, only with glory added to beauty. She is better and more wonderful than Miracle Gold, better and more wonderful than the substance of the ruby flash in the flame of the diamond. If the devil had but let me grow up as other men, she might have made me try to carry myself and act like a god. I am of Satan's crew now--it would hardly pay to apostatize. Here's Timmons."

The knock agreed upon sounded on the door and reverberated through the hollow darkness. Leigh rose, and sliding his left foot and supporting his body on the stick, held close in under his ribs, went to the door and opened it.

"Twelve to the minute," said Timmons, holding up his hand and waving it in the direction whence came the sound of a church clock striking midnight.

"Let us go for a walk," said Leigh, turning west, away from Welbeck Place and the Hanover, and shutting the door behind him.

"But I have the stuff with me," said Timmons, in a tone of annoyance and protest.

"Let us go for a walk, I say," cried Leigh imperiously, striking his thick twisted stick fiercely on the flags as he spoke.

The two men turned to the left, and went on a few paces in silence. Timmons was sulky. A nice thing surely for a creature to ask a man to call on business at his private residence with valuable property at midnight and then slam the door in his face and coolly ask him to go out for a walk! It was a downright insult, but a man couldn't resent an insult from such a creature. That was the worst of it.

"I have been in telegraphic communication with Birmingham since I saw you," said Leigh, stopping under a lamp-post, pouring out a few drops of eau-de-cologne into his palm and inhaling the spirit noisily.

"Oh?" said Timmons interrogatively, as he looked contemptuously at the dwarf.

"Hah! That's very refreshing. Most refreshing. May I offer you a little eau-de-cologne, Mr. Timmons?" said the little man with elaborate suavity.

"No, thanks," said Timmons gruffly. "I don't like it." Timmons's private opinion was that a man who used perfume of any kind must be an effeminate fool. It was not pleasant to think this man, with whom he was about to have very important business transactions, should be an effeminate fool. Perhaps it indicated that he was only a new kind of villain; that would be much better.

"Hah!" said Leigh, as they re-commenced their walk, "I am sorry for that, for it is refreshing, most refreshing. I was saying that since I had the pleasure of visiting your emporium--I suppose it is an emporium, Mr. Timmons?" he asked, with a pleasant smile.

"It may be, or it may be an alligator, or a bird-show, or anything else you like to call it," said Timmons in exasperation. "But you were saying you had a message from Birmingham since I saw you."

"I had not only a message, but several messages. I went straight from your emporium to King's Cross, so as to be near Birmingham and save delay in wiring. I know where I can usually get a clear wire there--a great thing when one is in a hurry--the mere signalling of the message is, as you know, instantaneous."

"Ay," said Timmons scornfully, with an impatient serpentine movement running up his body and almost shaking his head off its long, stalk-like neck. "Well, is the fool off the job?" asked he coarsely, savagely, in slang, with a view to showing how cheap he held such unprincipled circumlocution.

The dwarf stopped and looked up with blank amazement on his face and an ugly flash in his eyes. "Is what fool off the job, Mr. Timmons? Am I to understand that you are tired of these delays?"

Timmons snorted in disdainful rage. The implication that he was the only fool connected with the matter lay in the tone rather than the words, but it was unmistakable. The dwarf meant to insult him grossly, and he could not strike him, for it would be unmanly to hit such a creature, and he could not strangle him, for there were people about the street. By a prodigious effort he swallowed down his rage, spread his long thin legs out wide, as if to prevent the flight of Leigh, and said in a hoarse, threatening, sepulchral voice: "Look here, Mr. Leigh. I've come on business. What have you to say to me? I have twenty-six ounces that will average fifteen carats. Are you going to act square and stump up?"

"Hah! I see," said Leigh, smiling blandly, as though rejoicing on dismissing the injurious suspicion that Timmons wanted to back out of the bargain. "I own I am relieved. The fact, my dear sir, is, that on leaving you I telegraphed to my correspondent in Birmingham for----"

"No more gammon," said the other, menacingly. They were in front of a church, of the church whose clock they had heard strike midnight before they left Leigh's doorstep. Here there was a quiet space suited to their talk. The church and churchyard interrupted the line of houses, and fewer people passed on that side of the way than on the other. There were no shops in this street. Still it was lightsome, and never quite free from the sound of footsteps or the presence of some one at a distance. Stamer had hinted that Leigh might try to murder Timmons for plunder, and now Timmons was almost in the humour to murder Leigh for rage.

Leigh made a gesture of gracious deprecation with his left hand and bowed. "This, Mr. Timmons, is a matter of business, and I never allow anything so odious as fiction to touch even the robe of sacred business." He lifted his hat, raised his eyes to the top of the spire of the church and then bowed low his uncovered head. "For, Mr. Timmons, business is the deity every one of our fellow-countrymen worship."

"What are you going to do; that's what I want to know?" said the other fiercely.

"Precisely. Well, sir, I shall tell you my position in two words. I suspect my Birmingham correspondent." Leigh threw back his head and smiled engagingly, as though he had ended an amusing anecdote.

"By ----, you don't say that?" cried Timmons, fairly startled and drawing back a pace.

"I do."

"What does he know?"

"About what, my dear sir? What does he know about what? Are you curious to learn his educational equipments? Surely you cannot be curious on such a point?" He looked troubled because of Timmons's idle curiosity.

"Don't let us have any more rot. You say you suspect this man?"

"I do."

"What does he know of the stuff?"

"Of the stuff, as you call it, he knows from me absolutely nothing."

"How can you suspect him if he doesn't know? How can he peach if you haven't let him into the secret?"

"I didn't say I suspected him of betraying the secret of my manufacture."

"Then what do you suspect him of--speak plain?" Timmons's voice and manner were heavy with threat.

"Of something much worse than treachery."

"There is nothing worse than treachery in our business."

"I suspect this man of something that is worse than treachery in any business."

"It has no name?"

"It has a name. I suspect this man of not having much money."

"Ah!"

"Is not that bad? Is not that worse than treachery?"

Timmons did not heed these questions. They were too abstract for his mind.

"And you think this villain might cheat, might swindle us after all our trouble?"

"I think this villain capable of trying to get the best of us, in the way of not paying promptly or the full price agreed upon, or perhaps not being able to pay at all."

"And, Mr. Leigh, when did you begin to suspect this unprincipled scoundrel?" Timmons's language was losing the horrible element of slang as the virtuous side of his nature began to assert itself.

"Only to-day; only since I saw you in Tunbridge Street."

"Mr. Leigh, I hope, sir, you'll forgive my hot words of a while ago. I know I have a bad temper. I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Leigh." Timmons was quite humble now.

"Certainly, freely. We are to work, as you suggested, on the co-operative principle. If through my haste or inefficiency the money had been lost, we should all be the poorer."

"I have advanced about twenty pounds of my own money on the bit I have on me. My own money, without allowing anything for work and labour done in the way of melting down, or for anxiety of mind, or for profit. If that little bit of yellow stuff could keep me awake of nights, I often wonder how the people that own the Bank of England can sleep at all."

"They hire a guard of soldiers to sleep for them in the Bank every night."

"Eh, sir?"

"Hah! Nothing. Now you understand why I did not ask you into my place and take the alloy. We must wait a little yet. We must wait until I can light upon an honest man to work up the result of our great chemical discovery. I hope by this day week to be able to give you good and final news. In the meantime the ore is safe with you."

"I'm sure I'm truly grateful to you, sir."

"What greater delight can a person have than helping an honest man to protect himself against business wretches who are little better than thieves?"

"Eh?"

"Hah! Nothing. Give me a week. This day week at the same hour and at the same place."

"Very good. I shall be there."

An empty hansom was passing. Leigh whistled and held up his hand to the driver.

Suddenly both he and Timmons started, a long clang came from the other side of the railings.

"'Tisn't the last Trumpet for the tenants of these holdings," said Leigh, pointing his long, skinny, yellow, hairy hand at the graves. "It's the clock striking the quarter-past twelve. Good-night."

"Good-night," said Timmons, in a tone of reserve and suspicion. He was far from clear as to what he thought of the little man now bowling along down the road in the hansom.

Yes, this man was quite beyond him. Whether the whole thing was a solemn farce or not he could not determine. This man talked fifty to the dozen, at least fifty to the dozen.

Timmons touched his belt. Ay, the gold was there sure enough. That was a consolation anyway, but----

He shook his head, and set out to walk the whole way back to the dim, dingy street off the Borough Road, where he had a bed-room in which he spent no part of his time but the hours of sleep.