He pulled to his feet and saw to his right a driveway leading out of the hospital yard. To his left stood an ambulance whose metal surface glinted in the sun. From his rear came a tinkle of glass; he turned and, through an open door, saw a back boy washing dishes in the hospital kitchen. The fragrant odor of cooking had been in the air all along, but he had excluded it from his mind; now he was dizzy with the desire to eat. His legs wobbled with indecision; he heard the distant clang of a streetcar and he jerked nervously to attention.

I got to get out of here. . . . He walked unsteadily down to the iron gate and down the sidewalk, persuaded in his sense of direction only by the fact that he knew that he must get away from the police car. But, once he was on the street, he promptly forgot that he was fleeing and he ambled aimlessly with his eyes on the pavement, foolishly counting the concrete squares as he passed them; he lost count, then his eyes carefully followed the middle line of the sidewalk. He caught a glimpse of someone passing and he lifted his eyes and looked ahead of him quickly and guiltily, like a child surprised in an act of mischief. The next moment he was laughing quite without reason.

He was sweating excessively and he noticed that the air was growing close and humid and the sky was rapidly clouding. It was a minute before he realized what was happening; rain was falling, cold rain that made him shiver. He ran a few steps and jerked open the first door he encountered and found himself in a small vestibule. The chill of the rain roused him and he ran his fingers gingerly over the rough surface of the smudged walls of the vestibule, then gazed through the glass of the door out at the falling rain lashing up and down the darkened street. A stab came to his consciousness: A siren, faint at first and then rising sharply and drawing nearer, sounded from the direction of the hospital.

He held his breath. Swishing through the slanting rain was the police car in which he had ridden. Yeah, they looking for me. . . . He laughed quietly, feeling safe, secure. The siren died plaintively in the distance. He had to do something; but what? He felt in his hip pocket and got cigarettes and matches; he smoked in silence.

Through the glass of the door a movement caught his eye; thin columns of water snaked into the air from the tiny perforations in a manhole cover. The gushing columns stopped suddenly, as though the perforations had become clogged; then he saw the lid of the manhole lift slowly a foot into the air as a grey spout of turgid water snaked up from the underground. For a moment the water juggled the circular cover, then let it fall to the pavement with a loud bang. He was fascinated, waiting for the manhole cover to be tossed up again.