'What do you want me to do?' Bob recommenced. '_How_?'
Their eyes met, and in the woman's gaze he found a horrible
fascination, a devilish allurement to that which his soul shrank
from. She lowered her voice.
'There's lots of ways. It 'ud be easy to make it seem as somebody
did it just to rob him. He's always out late at night.'
His face was much the colour of the muddy water yellowed by that
shaft of sunlight. His lips quivered. 'I dursn't, Clem. I tell you
plain, I dursn't.'
'Coward!' she snarled at him, savagely. 'Coward! All right, Mr. Bob.
You go your way, and I'll go mine.'
'Listen here, Clem,' he gasped out, laying his hand on her arm.
'I'll think about it. I won't say no. Give me a day to think about
it.'
'Oh, we know what your thinkin' means.'
They talked for some time longer, and before they parted Bob had
given a promise to do more than think.
The long, slouching strides with which he went up from the
Embankment to the Strand gave him the appearance of a man partly
overcome with drink. For hours he walked about the City, in complete
oblivion of everything external. Only when the lights began to shine
from shop-windows did he consciously turn to his own district.
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