Sybarite stood, near the middle of a fence-enclosed area
of earth and flagstones; winded and weary; looking up and all around
him in distressed perplexity; in a stolen coat (to be honest about it)
and with six months' income from a million dollars unlawfully procured
and secreted upon his person; wanted for resisting arrest and
assaulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and
determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any
way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after
excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as
distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever was on land or
sea....
Conceiving the block as a well a-brim with blackness and clamorous
with violent sound, studded on high with inaccessible, yellow-bright
loopholes wherefrom hostile eyes spied upon his every secret movement,
and haunted below by vicious perils both animate and still: he found
himself possessed of an overpowering desire to go away from there
quickly.
But--short of further dabbling in crime--_how_?
To break his way to the street through one of those houses would he
not only to invite apprehension: it would be downright burglary.
To continue his headlong career of the fugitive backyards tom-cat was
out of the question, entirely too much like hard work, painful into
the bargain--witness scratched and abraded palms and agonised shins.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110