AN EARLY VISITOR TO TIMMONS.

Men in Mr. Timmons's business never look fresher at one period of the day than another. They seem no brighter for sleep, and, to judge by their appearance, either soap and water has no effect on them, or they seek no effect of soap and water. Lawyers put aside their wigs and gowns, and professors their gowns and mortar-boards, and butchers their aprons, and cooks their caps, before they leave the scene of their labours, but dealers in marine-stores never lay aside their grime. They cannot. The signs and tokens of their calling are ground into their flesh, and would resist any attempt at removal. Mr. Timmons was no exception to his class. On Thursday morning he was in every outward seeming the same as on Wednesday night. He was the same as on all other mornings, except that he came a little earlier than usual to his place in Tunbridge Street. He had private business to transact before throwing open the front of his store to the eyes of the few stragglers who passed through that gloomy haunt of discarded and disabled vehicles of the humbler kind.

He went in through the wicket, locked the wicket after him, and without loss of time dug up the old canvas-bag from under the sand, rolled up the chamois belt, and, having placed the belt in the bag, re-buried the latter in its old hiding place. Then he rose and stretched himself and yawned, more like a man whose day's work was over than about to begin.

He sat down on the old fire-grate where Mrs. Stamer had rested the night before, yawned again, leaned his head against the wall and fell fast asleep. The fact is he had slept little or nothing the night before. Oscar Leigh's strange conduct had set him thinking and fearing, and the knowledge that for the first time his chamois-belt was away from its home made him restless and kept him awake.

John Timmons had no regular time for throwing his bazaar open to the public. The shutters were never taken down before eight o'clock and never remained up after ten. He had come that morning at seven, and sat down to rest and doze before eight. At a little after nine he jumped up with a start and looked round with terror. A knock on the outside of the shutters had aroused him. He had often been at the store as early as seven, but never until now had he heard a demand for admittance at so early an hour. Could it be he had slept long into the day, or were the police after him?

He looked round hastily, wildly, out of his pale blue eyes. He threw up his arms on high, and shook them, indicating that all was lost. Then he composed himself, pulled his hat straight over his forehead, drew down his waistcoat and coat-sleeves, arranged his blue tie, and clearing his throat with a deep loud sound, stepped quickly to the wicket, where for a moment he moved his feet rapidly about to give the newly-levelled sand an appearance of ordinary use.

With great noise and indications of effort he unlocked the door and opened it.

A low-sized man, with grizzled hair and mutton-chop whiskers and blue spectacles, dressed in seedy black, and looking like a schoolmaster broken in health and purse, stood in the doorway.

Timmons stared at the man in amazement first, anger next, and lastly rage.

"Well?" he bellowed fiercely; "who are you? What do you want?"

The man did not speak. He coolly stepped over the bar of the wicket and stood close to Timmons in the dimly-lighted store.

The dealer was staggered. Was this a policeman come to arrest him? If he was, and if he had come alone, so much the worse for him!

Timmons put his hand on the man's shoulder, drew the man quickly clear of the wicket, shut the door and locked it. Then turning menacingly on the intruder, who had taken a couple of paces into the store, he said ferociously, "Now, sir! What is it?"

Quick as lightning the man drew a revolver from his waist-band under his coat and presented it at Timmons's head.

The latter fell back against the shutters with an oath and a shout of dismay.

Swift as thought the man dropped the weapon and thrust it back into its place in his waist-band under his coat, saying as he did so:

"You always said you should know me if I was boiled. What do you say now?"

"Stamer!" yelled Timmons, with another oath.

The other laughed. "And not even boiled either."

"By ----, I'll have it out of you for this trick yet," said Timmons in a whisper. "What a fright you gave me! and what a shout I made! Someone may have heard me. You should not play such tricks as that, Stamer. It's no joke. I thought you were a copper." And he began walking up and down rapidly to calm himself.

"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons," said the man, humbly and with an apologetic cough, "but I think your nerves want looking after."

"You scoundrel!"

"They do indeed, sir; you ought to get your doctor to put them right."

"You cursed blackguard!" hissed Timmons as he strode up and down the dark store, wiping the sweat off his streaked forehead with the ball of his hand.

"In an anxious business like ours, sir, a man can't be too careful. That's my reason again' the drink. Attendin' them temperance meetin's has done me a deal of good. I never get flustered now, Mr. Timmons, since I gave up the drink. I know, sir, you're next door to a teetotaller. It may be too much studyin', sir, with you. I have heard, sir, that too much studyin' on the brain and such like is worse than gin. If you could get away to the sea-side for a bit, sir, I'm certain 'twould do you a deal of good. You know I speak for your good, Mr. Timmons."

"You fool, hold your tongue! First I took you for a policeman----"

"I haven't come to that yet, sir," said the man in a tone of injury, and raising his shoulders to his ears as if to protect them from the pollution of hearing the word.

"And then I took you for a thief."

"Mr. Timmons!" cried the man pathetically. "Couldn't you see who I was? I never came here on business, sir. I came for the pleasure of seeing you, and to try if you would do a favour for me."

"Hold your tongue!" cried Timmons. "Hold your tongue, you fool."

The man said no more, but leaning his back against the wall, looked up blankly at the unceiled rafters and boards of the floor above.

The manner of Mr. John Timmons gradually became less volcanic. He arranged his necktie and thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets instead of swinging them round him, or running his fingers through his grizzled hair and whiskers. Suddenly he stopped before his visitor, and said grimly in a low voice, "Stamer, aren't you surprised you are alive?"

Stamer stood up on his feet away from the wall and said in a tone of expostulation, "Now, Mr. Timmons, it isn't so bad as that with me yet. I may have let one or two people see the barrel, you know, just to help business; but I never pulled trigger yet, sir. Indeed, I didn't."

"I mean, you fool, aren't you surprised I didn't kill you?" he asked heavily.

"You kill me, sir! For what?" cried the man in astonishment.

"For coming here at this time of the morning in the disgraceful state you are now in," he said, pointing scornfully at the other.

"Disgraceful state, Mr. Timmons, sir! You don't mean to say you think I'm in liquor?" said Stamer in an injured tone.

"In liquor, no. But worse. You are in masquerade, sir. In masquerade."

"Indeed, I'm not, sir. Why, I couldn't be! I don't even as much as know what it is."

"I mean, sir (and you know very well what I mean), that you are not here in your own clothes. What do you mean in coming here with your tomfoolery?" said Timmons severely. He was now quite recovered from his fright, and wanted to say nothing of his recent abject condition. The best way of taking a man's mind off you is to make an attack on him.

"Not in my own clothes! I hope you don't think I'm such a born loony as to walk about the streets in togs that I came by in the course of business. If you think that of me, sir, you put me down very low. I'm a general hand, as you ought to know, sir, and when there isn't anything to be done in the crib line, I'm not above turning my hand to anything that may be handy, such as tickers in a crowd. I use the duds I have on when I go to hear about the African Blacks. I change about, asking questions for information, and writin' down all the gentlemen tell me in my note-book, and I wind up my questions by asking not what o'clock it is, which would be suspicious, but how long the meeting will last, and no man, sir, that I ever saw can answer that question without hauling out his ticker, and then I can see whether it is all right, or pewter, or a Waterbury. Mr. Timmons, Waterburys is growing that common that men who have to make a living are starving. It's a downright shame and imposition for respectable English gentlemen to give their time to tryin' to improve the condition of the African Black, and do nothing to encourage the English watch-maker. What's to become of the English watch-maker, Mr. Timmons? I feel for him, sir!"

"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position. Why did you come here at this hour and in this outlandish get-up?"

"Well, sir," said Stamer, answering the latter question first, "you see I was here yesterday in fustian, and I didn't like to come here to-day in the same rags. It might look suspicious, for a man in my line can't be too careful. Of course, Mr. Timmons, you and I know, sir, that I come here on the square; but bad-minded people are horrid suspicious, and sometimes them new hands in the coppers make the cruellest and most unjust mistakes, sir. So I hope you'll forgive me coming here as an honest man. It won't occur again, sir. Indeed it won't."

"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position," repeated Timmons, who by this time had regained his ordinary composure. "You know I treat you as men in your position are never treated by men in mine. I not only give you a fair price for your goods, but now, when the chance comes, I am going to admit you to the advantages of the co-operative system."

"It's very, very kind of you, sir, and I'm truly thankful, sir; and I need only say that, barring thick and thin uns, I bring you everything, notes included, that come my way. The thick and thin uns, sir, are the only perquisites of the business I look for."

"Stamer, hold your tongue. Tell me in two words, what brought you here?"

"Well, sir, I was anxious to know how you got on last night? You know how anxious I was about you, because of your carrying so much stuff with you down a bad locality like Chelsea. I know you got there safe. I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons, for the liberty I took, but I thought two of us would be safer than one."

"You know I got there! Two of us safer than one! What do you mean? You are full of talk and can't talk straight. Out with it, man! Out with it!" cried Timmons, shaking his fist in Stamer's face.

"I took the liberty of followin' you, sir, at a respectful distance and I saw you safe to Mr. Leigh's door----"

"You infernal, prying ruffian----"

"No, sir. I was not curious. I was only uneasy about you, and I only saw you at his door all right; then I knew I could be of no more use, for, of course, you'd leave the stuff with him, and if anyone got wind of it there would be no use in followin' you after, and I could do nothing while you was in the house."

"Ah!" cried Timmons sharply, as though Stamer had convicted himself of lying. "If you came away when you saw me go into the house how did you find out the man's name? I never told you. That's one question I want to ask you; now here's another. What o'clock was it when you saw me go into the house?"

"Twelve to the minute."

"How do you know? Had you a red herring in your pocket? Eh?" asked Timmons derisively, shaking his forefinger in Stamer's face.

"I heard the clock, a church clock strike."

Timmons paused and drew back. He recollected his holding up his hand to Leigh, as the latter opened the door, and drawing attention to his own punctuality.

"But then what did you mean by going peeping and prying about there. Did you think I was deceiving you?" The dealer scowled at his visitor as he put the question.

Stamer made a gesture of humility and protest:

"Oh, no, sir! It was this way. When I saw you safe into the house----"

"Oh--ha-ha-ha! So you saw me safe into the house, did you? Ha-ha-ha--ho-ho-ho!" laughed Timmons in an appallingly deep voice.

"Well, no," answered Stamer in mild protest. "I didn't exactly see you go into the house. You know, for the moment I forgot I had these duds on, and I thought you might turn round and look back and see me and be wild with me for followin' you, so the minute you stopped at the door and knocked I slipped into a public that's at the corner, to be out of sight in case you should turn around, as most people do, to have a good look before going into a strange house--anyway I always do----"

"Very likely. Very likely you do have a good look round both before and after too. Well, and when you got into the public-house--although you're not on the drink--you began making your inquiries, I dare say?" said Timmons in withering reproach. "Or, may be you didn't bother to ask questions, but told all you knew right off to the potman or the barmaid. Eh?"

"Mr. Timmons, you're too hard," said Stamer in an injured tone, and with a touch of outraged dignity. "If you don't want to hear what happened, or won't believe what I say, I'll stop."

"Well, go on, but don't take all day."

"There isn't much to tell. I got into the private bar at the end of a passage and, just as I got in, the landlord was sayin' how Mr. Leigh, the little gentleman over the way, with the hump on him, had been in that day, and had told him wonderful things he was going to do with the skeleton of Moses, or somethin' of that kind, which had been found at the bottom of the Nile, or somewhere. This mention of a little man with a hump made me take an interest, for I remembered what you told me last evenin'. And, as the landlord was talking quite free and open for all to hear, I asked for a tuppenny smoke and a small lemon--for I'm off the drink----"

"Go on, or you'll drive me to it," said Timmons impatiently.

"I couldn't understand what the landlord was sayin' about the Prince being as dry as snuff, but anyway, after a minute he said: 'There he is, winding up his wonderful clock,' and all the men in the bar looked up, and I did too, and there was the little man with the hump on his back pulling at something back and forward like the rods in a railway signal-box."

"You saw him?"

"Yes, and all the men in the bar saw him."

"How many men were there in the private bar?"

"Half-a-dozen or eight."

"You were drunk last night, Stamer."

"I was as sober as I am now."

"What o'clock was it then?"

"Well, I cannot say exactly, between twelve and half-past."

"How long did you stay in that public-house?"

"Until closing time."

"And how soon after you went in did you see the little man working the handle, or whatever it was?"

"A minute after I went in. As I went in the landlord was speakin', and before he finished what he had to say he pointed, and I looked up and saw Mr. Leigh."

"The next time you dog me, and tell a lie to get out of blame, tell a good lie."

"Mr. Timmons, what I tell you is as true as that there's daylight at noon."

"Tell a better lie next time, Stamer," said Timmons, shaking his minatory finger at the other.

"Strike me dead if it isn't true."

"Why, the man, Mr. Leigh, did not go back into the house at all last night. He and I went for a walk, and were more than half-a-mile away when a quarter past twelve struck."

"Has your Mr. Leigh a twin brother?"

"Pooh! as though a twin brother would have a hump! Stamer, I don't know what your object is, but you are lying to me."

"Then the man's neighbours does not know him. All the men in the bar, except two or three, knew the hump-backed Leigh, and they saw the man's face plain enough, for at twenty minutes past twelve by the clock in the bar he stopped working at the handle and turned round and nodded to the landlord, who nodded back and waved his hand and said, 'There he his a noddin' at me now.' The publican is a chatty man. And then Mr. Leigh nodded back again, and after that turned round and went on working at the handle again."

"I tell you, at a quarter past twelve last night, I was standing under the church clock you heard, talking to Mr. Leigh, and as they keep all public-house clocks five minutes fast, that's the time you say you saw him. I never found you out in a lie to me, Stamer. I'll tell you what happened. You got beastly drunk and dreamed the whole thing."

"What, got drunk in half-an-hour? 'Tain't in the power of liquor to do it. Mr. Timmons, I swear to you I had nothing to drink all yesterday but that small lemon. I swear it to you, so help me----, and I swear to you, so help me, that all I say is true, and that all I say I saw I saw with my eyes, as I see you now, with my wakin' eyes and in my sober senses. If you won't take my word for it, go down to Chelsea and ask the landlord of the Hanover--that's the name of the house I was in."

The manner of the man was earnest and sincere, and Timmons could not imagine any reason for his inventing such a story. The dealer could make nothing of the thing, except that Stamer was labouring under some extraordinary delusion. Timmons had never been to Leigh's place before and never in the Hanover. If he had not been with Leigh during the very minutes Stamer was so sure he had seen Leigh working at his clock, he would have had no hesitation whatever in believing what the other had told him. But here was Stamer, or rather the hearsay evidence of the landlord of the public house, that Leigh was visibly working at his clock and in Chetwynd Street at the very moment the dwarf was talking to himself in the open air half-a-mile away. Of course five minutes in this case might make all the difference in the world, and there is often more than five minutes' difference in the time of clocks in public places; but then Stamer said Leigh was together the whole quarter-hour from midnight to a quarter past twelve!

There was something hideous, unearthly, ghastly, about this deformed dwarf. The chemist or clockmaker, in the few interviews which had taken place between them, had talked of mysteries and mysterious power and faculties which placed him above other men. There was something creepy in the look of the man, and something horrible in the touch of his long, lean, sallow, dark-haired, monkeylike fingers. The man or monster was unnatural, no doubt--was he more or less than mortal? Did he really know things hidden from other men? To make up for his deformities and deficiencies had powers and faculties denied to other men been given to him?

John Timmons did not believe in ghosts, but he did believe in devils, and he was not sure that devils might not even now assume human form, or that Oscar Leigh was not one of them, habilitated in flesh for evil purposes among men.

Stamer held no such faith. He did not believe in devils. He believed in man, and man was the only being he felt afraid of. He thought it no more than reasonable that Timmons should lie to him. He had the most implicit faith in the material honesty of Timmons in the dealings between the two of them; but lying was a consideration of spiritual faith, and he had no spiritual faith himself. But he was liberal-minded and generous, and did not resent spiritual faith in others. It was nothing to him. Timmons was the only man he had ever met who was absolutely honest in the matter of money dealings with him, and Stamer had elevated Timmons into the position of an idol to which he paid divine honours. He would not have lied to Timmons, for it would have done no good. He brought the fruits of his precarious and dangerous trade as a thief and burglar to Timmons, and he acted as agent for other men of his trade and class, and Timmons was the first fence he had met who treated him honourably, considerately. He had conceived a profound admiration and dog-like affection for this man. He would have laid down his life for him freely. He would have defended him with the last drop of his blood against his own confederates and associates. He would not have cheated him of a penny; but he would have lied to him freely if there was any good in lying, but as far as he could see there wasn't, and why should he bother to lie?

He was anxious about the fate of the twenty-six ounces of gold. If Timmons got the enhanced price promised by the dwarf, some more money, a good deal more money, was promised to him by Timmons, and he knew as surely as fate that if Timmons succeeded the money would be paid to himself. But he was afraid of the craft of this Oscar Leigh who was not shaped as other men, whom other men suspected of possessing strange powers, and who, according to his own statement, had been fishing up the corpses of prophets, or something of that kind, out of the bottom of the Nile.

A long silence had fallen on the two men. Timmons had resumed his walk up and down the store, but this time his eyes were cast down, his steps slow. He had no reason to distrust Stamer beyond the ordinary distrustfulness with which he regarded all sons of Adam. He had many reasons for relying on Stamer more than on nine-tenths of the men he met and had dealings with. He was puzzled, sorely puzzled, and he would much prefer to be alone. He was confounded, but it would not do to admit this, even in manner, to Stamer, and he felt conscious that his manner was betraying him. He stopped suddenly before his visitor and said sharply "Now that you have been here half-an-hour and upwards can't you say what you want. Money?"

"No, sir. Not money to-day. I called partly to know if you was safe, and partly to know if you had arranged. I hope you will excuse my bein' a little interested and glad to see you all right." Stamer never used slang to Timmons. He paid this tribute to the honesty of the dealer.

"Yes. Of course, it would be bad for you if I was knifed or shot. You'd fall into the hands of a rogue again. Well, you may make your mind easy for the present. I am alive, as you see. He did not come to any final arrangement last night. I brought the stuff back again with me safe and sound, and I am to meet him again at the same place in a week. Are you satisfied now?"

"No!" Stamer moved towards the door.

"Why?"

Stamer shook his head. "Have nothing to do with that man."

"What maggot have you got in your head now, Stamer?"

"He'll sell the pass. It is not clear in my mind now that he has not sold the pass already, that he has not rounded on you. If you meet him there again in a week it isn't clear to me that you won't find more company than you care for."

"What do you mean? Shall you be there?"

"No."

"Who then?"

"The police."

Stamer hurried through the wicket and was gone.

Timmons shut the door once more, and leaning his back against it plunged into a sea of troubled thoughts.