Then a remarkable thing happened.
The partition between the private bar and the public bar was about six feet high. Just over the dwarf's head a pair of long thin hands appeared on the top of the partition, and closed on it with the fingers pointing downward. Then very slowly and quite silently a round, shabby, brown hat stole upwards over the partition, followed by a dirty yellow-brown forehead, and last of all a pair of gleaming blue eyes that for a moment looked into the private bar, and then silently the eyes, the forehead, and the hat, sank below the rail, and finally the hands were withdrawn from the top of the partition. From the moment of the appearance of the hands on the rail until they left it did not occupy ten seconds.
No one in the private bar saw the apparition.
"Well," said Leigh, who showed no disposition to include Stamer in the conversation, "I can have a breath of air to-night when I am winding up. I am free till then. I think I'll go and look after that mummy. Oh! here's Binns with the muslin. Thank you, Binns, this will do capitally."
He took the little silver flask out of his pocket, and poured a few drops from it into his hand and sniffed it up, and then made a noisy expiration.
"Very refreshing. Very refreshing, indeed. I know I needn't ask you, Williams. I know you never touch it. You have no idea of how refreshing it is."
The smell of eau-de-cologne filled the air.
Stamer watched the small silver flask with eyes that blazed balefully behind the safe screen of his blue glasses.
"Would you oblige me," he said in a timid voice, holding out his hand as he spoke.
Leigh was in the act of returning the tiny flask to his waistcoat pocket. He arrested it a moment, and then let it fall in out of sight, saying sharply: "You wouldn't like it, sir. Very few people do like it. You must be used to it."
Stamer's suspicions were now fully roused. This was the very drug Leigh had used with Timmons. It produced little or no effect on the dwarf, for as he explained, he was accustomed to it, but on a man who had never inhaled it before the effect would be instant, and long and complete insensibility. "I should like very much to try. I can stand very strong smelling salts."
"Oh! indeed. Can you? Then you would like to try some strong smelling salts?" said Leigh with a sneer as he scornfully surveyed the shabby man who had got off his stool and was standing within a few feet of him. "Well, I have no more in the flask. That was the last drop, but I have some in this." Out of his other waistcoat pocket he took a small glass bottle with a ground cap and ground stopper. He twisted off the cap and loosened the stopper. "This is very strong, remember."
"All right." If he became insensible here and at this time it would do no harm. There was plenty of help at hand, and nothing at stake, not as with Timmons last night in that house over the way.
"Snuff up heartily," said the dwarf, holding out the bottle towards the other with the stopper removed.
Stamer leaned on one of the high stools with both his hands, and put his nose over the bottle. With a yell he threw his arms wildly into the air and fell back on the floor as if he were shot.
Williams sprang up on the counter and cried: "What's this! He isn't dead?" in terror.
The potman flew over the counter into the public bar, and rushed into the private compartment.
The solitary customer in the public bar drew himself up once more and stared at the prostrate man with round blue eyes.
Leigh laughed harshly as he replaced the stopper and screwed on the cap.
"Dead! Not he! He's all right! He said he could stand strong salts. I gave him the strongest ammonia. That's all."
The potman had lifted Stamer from the ground, propped him against the wall and flung half a bottle of water over his head.
Stamer recovered himself instantly. His spectacles were in pieces on the floor. He did not, considering his false beard and whiskers, care for any more of the potman's kindnesses. He stooped, picked up his hat and walked quickly out of the Hanover.
"I like to see a man like that," said Leigh, calmly blowing a dense cloud of cigar-smoke from his mouth and nodding his head in the direction Stamer had taken.
"You nearly killed the man," said Williams, dropping down from the counter inside the bar and staring at Leigh with frightened eyes that looked larger
than usual owing to the increased pallor of his face.
"Pooh! Nonsense! That stuff wouldn't kill anyone unless he had a weak heart or smashed his head in his fall. I got it merely to try the effect of it combined with a powerful galvanic battery, on the nasal muscles of my mummy. Now, if that man were dead we'd get him all right again in a jiffy with one sniff of it. I was saying I like a man like him. You see, he was impudent and intruded himself on me when he had no right to do anything of the kind, and he insisted on smelling my strong salts. Well, he had his wish, and he came to grief, and he picked himself up, or rather Binns picked him up, and he never said anything but went away. He knew he was in the wrong, and he knew he got worsted, and he simply walked away. That is the spirit which makes Englishmen so great all the world over. When they are beaten they shake hands and say no more about the affair. That's true British pluck." Leigh blew another dense cloud of smoke in front of him and looked complacently at Williams.