eller was that his name was Lukisch and he owed
for his rent.

Mr. Lukisch had nothing special against the queer old party who made
sheep's eyes at his clock every day. He hated him quite impartially, as
he hated everybody. Mr. Lukisch had a bad heart in more senses than one,
and a grudge against the world which he blamed for the badness of his
heart. Also he had definite ideas of reprisal, which were focused by a
dispossess notice, and directed particularly upon the person and
property of his landlord. The clock he needed as the instrument of his
vengeance; therefore he would not have sold it at any price to the
sheep-eyed old lunatic of the pushcart, who now, on the eve of his
eviction, stood gazing in with wistful contemplation. Presently he
passed on and Mr. Lukisch resumed his tinkering with the clock's
insides. He was very delicate and careful about it, for these were the
final touches, preparatory to his leaving the timepiece as a memento
when he should quietly depart that evening, shortly before nine. What
might happen after nine, or, rather, on the stroke of nine, was no worry
of his, though it might be and probably would be of the landlord's,
provided that heartless extortioner survived it.

Having completed his operations, Mr. Lukisch sat down in a rickety chair
and gazed at the clock, face to face, with contemplative satisfaction.
Stepfather Time would have been interested in the contrast between those
two physiognomies. The clock's face, benign and bland, would have
deceived him. But, innocent though he was in the ways of evil, the man's
face might have warned him.

Something within the clock's mechanism clicked and checked and went on
again. The sound, quite unexpected, gave Mr. Lukisch a bad start. Could
something have gone wrong with the combination? Suppose a premature
release.... At that panic thought something within Mr. Lukisch's bad
heart clicked and checked and did not go on again. The fear in his eyes
faded and was succeeded by an expression of surprise and inquiry.
Whether the inquiry was answered, nobody could have guessed from the
still, unwinking regard on the face of the victim of heart failure.

By and by a crowd gathered on the sidewalk, drawn by that mysterious
instinct for sensation which attracts the casual and the idle. Two bold
spirits entered the door and stood, hesitant, just inside, awed because
the clock seemed so startlingly alive in that place. Some one sent
upstairs for the