"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.