"Are we alone?" asked Leigh impatiently on Timmons's return.
"Hah! I am glad we are. If your friend were connected with racing I should call him a stayer. I came to tell you that I have just got back from Birmingham. I thought it best to go there and see again the man I had been in treaty with. I not only saw him but heard a great deal about him, and I am sorry to say I heard nothing good. He is, it appears, a very poor man, and he deliberately misled me as to his position and his ability to pay. I am now quite certain that if I had opened business with him I should have lost anything I entrusted to him, or, if not all, a good part. Hah!"
"Then I am not to meet you _at the same place_, next Thursday night?" asked Timmons, with emphasis on the tryst. He had not at this moment any interest in the mere business about which they had been negotiating. He was curious about other matters. His mind was now tolerably clear, but flabby and inactive still.
"No. There is no use in your giving me the alloy until I see my way to doing something with it, and I feel bound to say that after this disappointment in Birmingham, I feel greatly discouraged altogether. Hah! You do not, I think you told me, ever use eau-de-cologne?"
"Then you are distinctly wrong, for it is refreshing, most refreshing." He sniffed up noisily some he had poured into the palm of one hand and then rubbed together between the two. "Most refreshing."
"Then, Mr. Leigh, I suppose we are at a standstill?"
"What you mean, I suppose, Mr. Leigh, is that you do not see your way to going any further?"
"Well, yes. At present I do not see my way to going any further."
Timmons felt relieved, but every moment his curiosity was increasing. There was no longer any need for caution with this goblin, or man, or devil, or magician. If Leigh had meant to betray him, the course he was now pursuing was the very last he would adopt.
"You went to Birmingham yesterday. May I ask you by what train you went down?"
"Yes. Just arrived. I drove straight here, as I told you."
"And you were away from half-past two yesterday until now. You were out of London yesterday from two-thirty until early this morning?"
"Yes; until six this morning. Why are you so curious? You do not, I hope, suspect me of saying anything that is not strictly true?" said Leigh, throwing his head back and striking the sandy floor fiercely with his stick.