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 landlord, who arrived to bemoan the unjust fates which
had not only mulcted him of two months' rent with nothing to show for it
but a rickety clock, but had also saddled him with a wholly superfluous
corpse. He abused both indiscriminately, but chiefly the clock because
it gave the effect of being sentient. So fervently did he curse it that
Stepfather Time, repassing with Willy Woolly, heard him and entered.