litate his share of the
preparations, and he had still an hour or two on hand before the
important moment arrived. That interval he devoted to his private
affairs, and those of the office, so that his uncle should be
inconvenienced as little as possible by an absence which he now hoped
might be prolonged for a considerable time.

It had been dark for more than an hour ere the accomplices met again,
equipped and ready for the work they had pledged themselves to
undertake.

Jim, indeed, contrary to his wont, when "business," as he called it,
was on hand, seemed scarcely sober; but to obtain the use of the
vehicle he required without the company of its driver, he had found
it necessary to ply the latter with liquor till he became insensible,
although the drunken man's instincts of good-fellowship bade him
insist that his generous entertainer should partake largely of the
fluids consumed at his expense. To drink down a London cabman, on
anything like fair terms, is an arduous task, even for a housebreaker,
and Jim's passions were roused to their worst by alcohol long before
he arrived with his four-wheeled cab at the appointed spot where he
was to wait for Tom Ryfe.

How he laughed to himself while he felt the pliant life-preserver
coiled in his great-coat pocket--the long, keen, murderous knife
resting against his heart. A fiend had taken possession of the man.
Already overleaping the intervening time, ignoring everything but the
crime he meditated, his chief difficulty seemed how he should dispose
of Tom's mutilated body ere he flew to reap the harvest of his guilt.

He chuckled and grinned with a fierce, savage sense of humour, while
he recalled the imperious manner in which Mr. Ryfe had taken the
initiative in their joint proceedings; as if they originated in his
own invention, were ordered solely for his own convenience; and the
tone of authority in which that gentleman had warned him not to be
late.

"It's good! That is!" said Jim, sitting on the box of the cab, and
peering into the darkness, through which a gas-lamp glimmered with
dull, uncertain rays, blurred by the autumn fog. "You'd like to be
master, you would, I dare say, all through the job, and for me to be
man! You'd best look sharp about it. I'll have that blessed life of
yours afore the sun's up to-morrow, and see who'll be master then. Ay,
and missis too! Hooray! for the cruel eyes, and the touch-me-not airs.
The proud, pale-faced devil! as thought