"What are you shoutin' about?" cried Stamer, in a tone of dangerous menace. "What are you shoutin' about?" he said again, as he passed Timmons and slunk behind the pile of shutters and flattened himself up against the wall in the shadow of them.
"Leigh is dead!" cried Timmons in excitement, and taking no notice of Stamer's strange manner and threatening tone.
"_I_ know all about _that_, I suppose," said Stamer from his place of concealment. He was standing between the shutters and the old fire-grate, and quite invisible to anyone in the street. His voice was hollow, his eyes bloodshot and starting out of his head. Notwithstanding the warmth of the morning, his teeth were chattering in his head. His bloodshot eyes were in constant motion, new exploring the gloomy depths of the store, now glancing savagely at Timmons, now looking, in the alarm of a hunted beast, at the opening into the street.
Timmons took little or no notice of the other man beyond addressing him. He was in a state of wild excitement, not exactly of joy, but triumph. It was a hideous sight to see this lank, grizzled, repulsive-looking man capering around the store, and exulting in the news he had just read, of a man on whom he had fawned a day before. "He's dead! The dwarf is dead, Stamer!" he cried again. In his wild gyrations his hat had fallen off, disclosing a tall, narrow head, perfectly bald on the top.
"Shut up!" whispered Stamer, savagely, "if you don't want to follow him. I'm in no humour for your noise and antics. Do you want to have the coppers down on us?--do you, you fool?" He flattened himself still more against the wall, as though he were striving to imbed himself in it.
Timmons paused. Stamer's words and manner were so unusual and threatening that they attracted his attention at last. "What's the matter?" he asked, in irritated surprise. "What's the matter?" he repeated, with lowering look.
"Why, you've said what's the matter," said Stamer, viciously. "And you're shouting and capering as if you wanted to tell the whole world the news. This is no time for laughing and antics, you fool!"
"Who are you calling a fool?" cried Timmons, catching up an iron bar and taking a few steps towards the burglar.
"You, if you want to know. Put that down. Put that bar down, I say. Do it at once, and if you have any regard for your health, for your life, don't come a foot nearer, or I'll send you after him! By ----, I will!"
Timmons let the bar fall, more in astonishment than fear. "What do you mean, you crazy thief? Have they just let you out of Bedlam, or are you on your way there? Anyway, it's lucky the place is handy, you knock-kneed jail-bird! Why he's shaking as if he saw a ghost!"