He gave his suggestive grin and dropped my hand. I wiped it mechanically as I pulled Wood’s bell, and drummed on his knocker. The landlady kept me waiting; it was a trick she had. When at last she opened the door she asked me acrimoniously:
“Aint the bell enough, but you must go playin’ on the knocker and bringing a person’s ’art into their mouths?”
A week later Orion came to my rooms. It was about nine in the evening—Saturday evening. I was just off to the “Oxford,” and told him so. But he caught me by the sleeve and said feverishly:
“Haven’t you heard?”
“What?”
“My aunt—Mrs. Grigg, you know. She—she’s murdered.”
He sat down in the saddlebag chair by the fire. Yes, the same saddlebag. That shabby old thing you are sitting in, with the fallen springs and the shiny mark of many fingers on the arms. Don’t get up. I brought out the bottle and gave him a nip of whisky. He was shaking all over like a little clay-tinted marionette.
“Murdered!” I said, the vivid image of the old woman coming back. “Murdered!”
“Yes; just now.” He made a gesture for more whisky.
The glass he held was dancing a jig in his hand. I noticed—it seemed an odd thing to notice at such a time—how clean his hands were. One does notice unimportant things.