Though already late in the evening, half-naked children played in the gutters; hawkers of multitudinous commodities cried their wares under gasoline banjo torches affixed to their pushcarts; shawled women of half a dozen races, and men equally cosmopolitan, loitered at the curb, or blocked the pavement, or brushed by him.

Now a man passed him, flinging a greeting from the corner of his mouth; now another, always without movement of the lips--and Jimmie Dale answered them--from the corner of his mouth.
But while his eyes were alert, his mind was only subconsciously attune to his surroundings.

Was it indeed the beginning of the end?
Some day, he had told himself often enough, the end must come.

Was it coming now, surely, with a sort of grim implacability--when it was too late to escape! Slowly, but inexorably, even his personal freedom of action was narrowing, being limited, and, ironically enough, through the very conditions he had himself created as an avenue of escape.
It was not only the police now; it was, far more to be feared, the underworld as well.

In the old days, the role of Larry the Bat had been assumed at intervals, at his own discretion, when, in a corner, he had no other way of escape; now it was forced upon him almost daily.