"Still working at your wonderful clock, Mr. Leigh?" said the greengrocer from Sloane Street, with the intention of sharing his conversation fairly between the landlord and the dwarf, the only men present who were sitting above the salt.
"Well, sir, literally speaking, I cannot be said to be working at it now. But I am daily engaged upon it, and before a quarter of an hour I shall be busy winding it up."
"Have you to wind it every day?"
"Yes. St. Paul's clock takes three quarters of an hour's winding every day with something like a winch handle. My clock takes half an hour every night. It must be wound between twelve and one, and I have made it a rule to wind it in the first half hour. My one does not want nearly so much power as St. Paul's. It is wound by a lever and not a winch handle. By-and-by, when it is finished and placed in a proper position in a proper tower, and I can increase the power, once a week will be sufficient."
"It is, I have heard, the most wonderful clock in London?"
"In London! In London! In the worlds sir. It is the most wonderful clock ever conceived by man."
"And now suppose you forgot to wind it up, what would happen?"
"There is no fear of that."
"It must be a great care on your mind."
"Immense. I have put up a curtain today, so that I may be able to keep the window open and get a breath of air this hot weather."
"Are you not afraid of fire up there and so near a bakehouse?"
"I never thought of fire. There is little or no danger of fire. Mr. Forbes is quite solvent."
"But suppose anything were to happen, it is so high up, it could not be got down?"
"Got down! Got down! Why, my dear sir, it is twelve feet by nine, and parts of it are so delicate that a rude shake would ruin them. Got down! Why it is shafted to the wall. All my power comes through the wall, from the chimney. When it is shifted no one will be able to stir bolt or nut but me. _I_ must do it, sir. No other man living knows anything about it. No other man could understand it. Fancy anyone but myself touching it! Why he might do more harm in an hour than I could put right in a year, ay, in three years. Well, my time is up. Good night, gentlemen."
He scrambled off his high stool and was quickly out of the bar. It was now five minutes to twelve o'clock right time.
He crossed Welbeck Street and opening the private door of Forbes's in Chetwynd Street went in, closing the door after him.
As he came out John Timmons emerged from the public bar of the Hanover, and turned into Welbeck Place. He went on until he came opposite the window of the clock-room. Here he stood still, thrust his hands deep down in his trousers' pockets, and leaning his back against the wall, prepared to watch with his own eyes the winding of the clock.
In less than five minutes the window of the top room, which had been dark, gradually grew illumined until the light came full through the transparent oiled muslin curtain. Timmons could see for all practical purposes as plainly as through glass.
"There Leigh is, anyway," thought Timmons, "working away at his lever. Can it be he was doing the same thing at this hour last night? Nonsense. He was walking away from this place with me at this hour last night as sure as I am here now. But what did he say himself to-day? I shouldn't mind Stamer, for he is a fool. But the landlord and Stamer say the same thing, and Leigh himself said it too this day. I must be going mad.
"There, he is turning round now and nodding
to the men in the bar. They said he did the same last night, and, as I live, there's the clock we were under striking the quarter past again! I must be going mad. I begin to think last night must have been all a dream with me. I don't think he's all right. I don't believe in witchcraft, but I do believe in devilry, and there's something wrong here. I'll watch this out anyway. I must bring him to book over it. I'll tell him straight what I know-that is if I know anything and am not going mad-"
Whurr-whizz!
"Why what's that over head?"
Timmons looked up, but saw nothing.
"It's some young fellows larking."
He glanced back at the window.
"What a funny way he's nodding his head now. And there's a hole in the curtain and there seems to be a noise in the room. There goes the gas out. I suppose the clock is wound up now. Well, it's more than I can understand and a great deal more than I like, and I'll have it out of him. It would be too bad if that fool Stamer were right after all, and-but the whole thing is nonsense.
"Strange I didn't hear the clock strike the hour and yet Leigh's light is out. I suppose his half hour winding was only another piece of his bragging.
"Is the light quite out? Looks now as if it wasn't. He must have put it out by mistake or accident, for surely it hasn't struck half-past twelve yet.
"Ah, what's that? He is lighting a match or something. No, my eyes deceive me. There is no light. Everything here seems to deceive me. I'll go home.
"Ah, there's the half-hour at last!"