"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?"