“I got so tired of waiting,” he continued in a confidential way, and we both bent close to catch every word, closing him in, as it seemed. “She wouldn’t part with a penny and she wouldn’t die,” he went on piteously. “What are you to do with a woman like that? I was on my beam ends. It is all the accursed City. I was afraid of getting out of a berth. When you get out of a berth you’re done. I’ve been with the same firm fifteen years, and yet they were going to turn me off like a dog--the bookkeeper told me so.” He was laying himself quite bare. He dropped the flimsy lie of his daily life. He did not hold to the junior-partner fiction any longer. “It was very easy,” he added, with a certain workman-like pride in the affair. “I knew when the servant went out marketing; knew how long she’d be, and where she hid the street-door key--on a ledge near the coal cellar by the area steps. It was the easiest matter in the world. The old woman--keep her back, can’t you? She doesn’t want to hear--she knows. She was stooping over the fire--weren’t you? She had been cutting up meat; the stew was on the hob and the carving knife was on the table. I gave her one certain blow. She gave me one look--I might have known what that look meant. “But I did it beautifully. I went back to my rooms and washed my hands and changed my cuffs, so as to be sure,” he sniggered. “I had only just finished when the servant came round. It was a close shave. And then I went and told Groome. No one need ever have known. But you can’t fight with a woman who comes out of her grave! “She takes up so much room that I can’t breathe. Let her out, shove her into the road. She’ll never be able to catch us up. Let the wheels go over her.” Clara Citron, who had held his wrists firmly all the time, dropped them and cautiously opened the door of the coach a very little way. I twitched her skirt. “What are you doing?” “I’m going to tell them to drive to the Old Bailey--that’s Newgate, isn’t it?” she returned viciously. Evidently she owed Orion some deep grudge. “Pooh! We don’t do it that way. Sit down. Take up all the seat--try to convince him, to keep him quiet. I’ll look after him to-night.” She sat down looking slightly sulky. “I trust you to look after my interests,” she said plaintively, after a pause. “I’m a hard-working woman and all the money was on my side of the family. Here’s my card.” She pulled out a thickly-lettered squab of cardboard. “‘Citron, The Parade, Southsea.’ If you ever want a blow of sea air, I can always let you have bed and breakfast on reasonable terms.” The coach swung merrily on. I rather fancy that the men on the box were singing. Orion kept on saying piteously that Mrs. Grigg, in the red dress, was taking up all the room--more and more room--that she was slowly strangling him. In this fashion we rattled back to Bloomsbury, where it was getting dusk and where rain fell more heavily than it had done in the morning.