“The chap that owns this razor,” said the policeman, emphasising each word with a gesture of the blade, “must ’ave slunk behind you and me as we stood ’ere talking and dropped it, maybe not finding it sharp enough for ’is purpose. What do you think, Mr. Maturin?” But Mr. Maturin begged to be excused from thinking, protesting that men are in the hands of God and God is in the hands of women, so what the devil is there to think about? Mr. Trevor says that the motive behind his remark at that moment, which was to the effect that he simply must have a drink, was merely that he was thirsty. A clock struck two. “After hours,” said the policeman; and he seemed, Mr. Trevor thought, to grin evilly. “What do they know of hours,” sighed Mr. Maturin, “who only Ciro’s know? Come, Ralph. My love, she jilted me but the other night. Therefore I will swim in wine, and thrice will I call upon her name when I am drowning. Constable, good-night to you.” “Now I’ve warned you!” the policeman called after them. “Don’t go into any alleys or passages like Lansdowne Passage else you’ll be finding yourselves slit up like vealanam-pies.” Maybe it was only the treacherous light of the moon, but Mr. Trevor fancied as he looked back that the policeman, where he stood thoughtfully fingering the shining blade, seemed to be grinning evilly at them. II They walked in silence, their steps ringing sharp on the bitter-chill air. The night in the sky was pale at the white disdain of the moon. It was Mr. Maturin who spoke at last, saying: “There’s too much talk of murder to-night. A man cannot go to bed on such crude talk. You know me, kid. Shall we go to _The Garden of My Grandmother_?” At that moment a taxicab crawled across the moonlight; and the driver, a man in a Homburg hat of green plush, did not attempt to hide his pleasure at being able to satisfy the gentlemen’s request to take them to _The Garden of My Grandmother_. Mr. Trevor says that he has rarely chanced upon a more unsatisfactory taxicab than that driven by the man in the Homburg hat of green plush. By closing one’s eyes one might perhaps have created an illusion of movement by reason of certain internal shrieks and commotions, but when one saw the slow procession of shops by the windows and the lamp-posts loitering by the curb, one was, as Beau Maturin pointed out, justified in believing that the hackney-cab in question was not going fast enough to outstrip a retired Czecho-Slovakian admiral in an egg-and-spoon race. Nor were they altogether surprised when the taxicab died on them in Conduit Street. The man in the Homburg hat of green plush jumped out and tried to restart the engine. He failed. The gentlemen within awaited the issue in silence. The silence, says Mr. Trevor, grew terrible. But the taxicab moved not, and the man in the Homburg hat of green plush began, in his agitation, thumping the carburetor with his clenched fist. “No petrol,” he pleaded. “No petrol.”