LEIGH CONFIDES IN TIMMONS.

Timmons uttered a wild yell, and springing away from the wall fled to the extreme end of the store, and then faced round panting and livid.

"Hah!" said the shrill voice of the man on the threshold. "Private theatricals, I see. I did not know, Mr. Timmons, that you went in for such entertainments. They are very amusing I have been told; very diverting. But I did not imagine that business people indulged in them in their business premises at such an early hour of the day. I am disposed to think that, though the idea is original, the frequent practice of such scenes would not tend to increase the confidence of the public in the disabled anchors, or shower-baths, or invalid coffee-mills, or chain shot, or rusty fire-grates, it is your privilege to offer to the consideration of customers. Hah! I may be wrong, but such is my opinion. Don't you think, Mr. Timmons, that you ought to ring down the curtain, and that this gentleman, who no doubt represents the villain of the piece confronted with his intended victim, had better get up and look after his breakfast?" He pointed to the prostrate Stamer, who lay motionless upon the sandy floor.

Timmons did not move or speak. The shock had, for the moment, completely bereft him of his senses.

"I have just come back from the country," said the dwarf, "and I thought I'd call on you at once. I should like to have a few moments' conversation with you, if your friend and very able supporter would have the kindness to consider himself alive and fully pardoned by his intended victim."

"Hush!" cried Timmons, uttering the first sound. The words of the hunchback, although uttered in jest, had an awful significance for the dazed owner of the place.

"Hah! I see your friend is not fabled to be in heart an assassin, but the poor and hard-working father of a family, who is just now indulging in that repose which is to refresh him for tackling anew the one difficulty of providing board and lodging and raiment for his wife and little ones. But, Mr. Timmons, in all conscience, don't you think you ought to put an end to this farce? When I came in I judged by his falling down and some incoherent utterance of yours that you two were rehearsing a frightful tragedy. Will you oblige us by getting up, sir? The play is over for the present, and my excellent friend Timmons here is willing to make the ghost walk."

The prostrate man did not move.

Timmons shuddered. He made a prodigious effort and tried to move forward, but had to put his hand against the wall to steady himself.

Leigh approached Stamer and touched him with his stick. Stamer did not stir.

"Is there anything the matter with the man? I think there must be, Timmons. What do you mean by running away to the other end of the place? Why this man is unconscious. I seem to be fated to meet fainting men."

Timmons now summoned all his powers and staggered forward. Leigh bent over Stamer, but, although he tried, failed to move him.

Timmons regained his voice and some of his faculties. "He has only fainted," said he, raising Stamer into a sitting posture.

Stamer did not speak, but struggled slowly to his feet, and assisted by Timmons walked to the opening and was helped a few yards down the street. There the two parted without a word. By the time Timmons got back he was comparatively composed. He felt heavy and dull, like a man who has been days and nights without sleep, but he had no longer any doubt that Oscar Leigh was present in the flesh.

"Are we alone?" asked Leigh impatiently on Timmons's return.

"We are."

"Hah! I am glad we are. If your friend were connected with racing I should call him a stayer. I came to tell you that I have just got back from Birmingham. I thought it best to go there and see again the man I had been in treaty with. I not only saw him but heard a great deal about him, and I am sorry to say I heard nothing good. He is, it appears, a very poor man, and he deliberately misled me as to his position and his ability to pay. I am now quite certain that if I had opened business with him I should have lost anything I entrusted to him, or, if not all, a good part. Hah!"

"Then I am not to meet you _at the same place_, next Thursday night?" asked Timmons, with emphasis on the tryst. He had not at this moment any interest in the mere business about which they had been negotiating. He was curious about other matters. His mind was now tolerably clear, but flabby and inactive still.

"No. There is no use in your giving me the alloy until I see my way to doing something with it, and I feel bound to say that after this disappointment in Birmingham, I feel greatly discouraged altogether. Hah! You do not, I think you told me, ever use eau-de-cologne?"

"I do not."

"Then you are distinctly wrong, for it is refreshing, most refreshing." He sniffed up noisily some he had poured into the palm of one hand and then rubbed together between the two. "Most refreshing."

"Then, Mr. Leigh, I suppose we are at a standstill?"

"Precisely."

"What you mean, I suppose, Mr. Leigh, is that you do not see your way to going any further?"

"Well, yes. At present I do not see my way to going any further."

Timmons felt relieved, but every moment his curiosity was increasing. There was no longer any need for caution with this goblin, or man, or devil, or magician. If Leigh had meant to betray him, the course he was now pursuing was the very last he would adopt.

"You went to Birmingham yesterday. May I ask you by what train you went down?"

"Two-thirty in the afternoon."

"And you came back this morning?"

"Yes. Just arrived. I drove straight here, as I told you."

"And you were away from half-past two yesterday until now. You were out of London yesterday from two-thirty until early this morning?"

"Yes; until six this morning. Why are you so curious? You do not, I hope, suspect me of saying anything that is not strictly true?" said Leigh, throwing his head back and striking the sandy floor fiercely with his stick.

"No. I don't _suspect_ you of saying anything that is not strictly true."

The emphasis on the word _suspect_ caught Leigh's attention. He drew himself up haughtily and said, "What do you mean, sir?"

"I mean, sir," said Timmons, shaking his minatory finger at him, and frowning heavily, "not that I suspect you of lying, but that I am sure you are lying. I was at the Hanover last night, you were there too."

Leigh started and drew back. He looked down and said nothing. He could not tell how much this man knew. Timmons went on:

"I was in the public bar, against the partition that separates it from the private bar, when you came in. You called for rum hot, and you went away at close to twelve o'clock to wind up your clock. I went out then and saw you at the window winding up the clock. I was there when the light went out just at half past twelve. Now, sir, are you lying or am I?"

Leigh burst into a loud, long, harsh roar of laughter that made Timmons start, it was so weird and unexpected. Then the dwarf cried, "Why you, sir, you are lying, of course. The man you saw and heard is my deputy."

"You lie. I heard about your deputy. He is a deaf and dumb man, who can't write, and is as tall as I am, a man with fair hair and beard."

"My dear sir, your language is so offensive I do not know whether you deserve an explanation or not. Anyway, I'll give you this much of an explanation. I have two deputies. One of the kind you describe, and one who could not possibly be known by sight from myself."

"But I have more than sight, even if the two of you were matched like two peas. I heard your voice, and all your friends in the bar knew you and spoke to you, and called you Mr. Leigh. It was you then and there, as sure as it is you here and now." Timmons thought, "Stamer when he fired must have missed Leigh, and Leigh must have gone away, after, for some purpose of his own, setting fire to the place. He is going on just as if the place had not been burned down last night, why, I am sure I do not know. I can't make it out, but anyway, Stamer did not shoot him, and he is pretending he was not there, and that he was in Birmingham. He's too deep for me, but I am not sure it would not be a good thing if Stamer did not miss him after all."

The clockmaker paused awhile in thought. It was not often he was posed, but evidently he was for a moment at a nonplus. Suddenly he looked up, and with a smile and a gesture of his hands and shoulders, indicating that he gave in:

"Mr. Timmons," he said suavely, "you have a just right to be angry with me for mismanaging our joint affair, and I own I have not told you quite the truth. I did _not_ go to Birmingham by the two-thirty yesterday. I was at the Hanover last night just before twelve, and I did go into Forbes's bakery as you say. But I swear to you I left London last night by the twelve-fifteen, and I swear to you I did not wind up my clock last night. It was this morning between four and five o'clock I found out in Birmingham that the man was not to be trusted. You will wonder where I made inquiries at such an hour."

"I do, indeed," said Timmons scornfully.

"I told you, and I think you know, that I am not an ordinary man. My powers, both in my art and among men, are great and exceptional. When I got to Birmingham this morning, I went to--where do you think?"

"The devil!"

"Well, not exactly, but very near it. I went to a police-station. It so happens that one of the inspectors of the district in which this man lives is a great friend of mine. He was not on duty, but his name procured for me, my dear Mr. Timmons, all the information I desired. I was able to learn all I needed, and catch the first train back to town. You see now how faithfully I have attended to our little business. I left the Hanover at five minutes to twelve, and at two minutes to twelve I was bowling along to Paddington to catch the last train, the twelve-fifteen."

"That, sir, is another lie, and one that does you no good. At twelve-fifteen I saw you as plain as I see you now--for although there was a thin curtain, the curtain was oiled, and I could see as if there was no curtain, and the gas was up and shining on you--I say _at fifteen minutes after twelve I saw you turn around and nod to your friends in the bar_. It's nothing to me now, as the business is off, but I stick to what I say, Mr. Leigh."

"And I stick to what I say."

"Which of the says?" asked Timmons contemptuously. "You have owned to a lie already."

"Lie is hardly a fair word to use. I merely said one hour instead of another, and that does not affect the substance of my explanation about Birmingham. I told you two-thirty, for I did not want you to be troubled with my friend the inspector."

This reference to a police-station and inspector would have filled Timmons with alarm early in the interview, but now he was in no fear. If this man intended to betray him, why had he not done so already? and why had he not taken the gold for evidence?

"But if you left Forbes's, how did you get away? Through the front-door in Chetwynd Street, or through the side-door in Welbeck Place?"

"Through neither. Through the door of the bakehouse into the mews."

Timmons started. This might account for Stamer's story of the ghost.

"But who wound the clock? I saw you do it, Mr. Leigh--I saw you do it, sir, and all this Birmingham tale is gammon."

"Again you are wrong. And now, to show you how far you are wrong, I will tell you a secret. I have two deputies. One I told that fool Williams about, and requested him as a great favour not to let a soul know. By this, of course, I intended that every one who enjoyed the privilege of Mr. Williams's acquaintance should know. But of my second deputy I never spoke to a soul until now, until I told you this moment. The other deputy is a man extremely like me from the waist up. He is ill-formed as I am, and so like me when we sit that you would not know the difference across your own store. But our voices are different, very different, and he is more than a foot taller than I. You did not see the winder last night standing up. He always takes his seat before raising the gas."

A light broke in on Timmons. This would explain all. This would make Stamer's story consist with his own experience of the night before. This would account for this man, whom Stamer said he had shot, being here now, uninjured. This would make the later version of the tale about Birmingham possible, credible. But--awful but!--it would mean that the unfortunate, afflicted deputy had been sacrificed! Yes, most of what this man had said was true.

"What's the unfortunate deputy's name?" he asked, with a shudder.

"That I will not tell."

"But it must come out on the inquest, to-day or to-morrow, or whenever they find the remains."

"Remains of what?" asked Leigh, frowning heavily.

"Of your deputy. They say in the paper it was you that lost your life in the fire."

"Fire! Fire! Fire where?" thundered the dwarf, in a voice which shook the unceiled joists above their heads and made the thinner plates of metal vibrate.

"Don't you know? Haven't you seen a paper? Why Forbes's bakery was burnt out last night, and the papers say you lost your life in the fire."