 What wouldn't Mr. Graham likely wish for at the beginning of the story?
This gave them exactly no room to move either forward or backward, for the car had its back to a hydrant and the taxi to a lamp. What you have told me is so impossibly unlikely, and the odds against it so astronomical, that I must take the view that you're either stringing me or you're subject to a delusion." Discounting the fact that you could have prearranged it, if my dim provisional theory is right, that would be actually impossible.
 kinder neighbors
 better weather  kinder neighbors  his wife to come home  a better job