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"Cuthbert!" he called. Weighting the envelope with a coin, he threw it into the air. It fell in the gutter, under a lamp-post, and full in view, and at once the two madmen below splashed the street around it with bullets. But, indifferent to the bullets, a policeman sprang from a dark areaway and flung himself upon it. The next moment he staggered.
Inside, he locked the door and lowered the shade of the single window which looked out on an areaway. No explanation was necessary as he took a hatchet and pried up a plank. This accomplished, he reached under the floor and produced a tin cup and a two-gallon jug.
He had just finished fastening to the flagpole a stout rope which stretched taut across an areaway some twenty or thirty feet wide to the next building, where it was fastened to a chimney. Again and again he tested it, and finally with a nod of satisfaction descended from the roof and went to the apartment of Wu.
Across the street the voluntary shadow detached itself from cover in the areaway, and skulked after him. He paid no heed. But when the shadow rounded the corner, it saw only a dark and empty street, and pulled up with a grunt of doubt. Simultaneously something not unlike a thunderbolt for force and fury was launched, from the dark shelter of a doorway near by, at its devoted head.
He forced his legs to carry him down the steps and reluctantly, yet briskly, he propelled his pink-hued person toward the ray of light that streamed out through the grated window-opening and fell across the areaway. "You mustn't judge by first appearances," he was explaining with a false and transparent attempt at matter-of-factness as he came into the zone of illumination.
Kennedy and Elaine had scarcely come out of the house and descended the steps, one afternoon, when a sinister face appeared in a basement areaway nearby. The figure was crouched over, with his back humped up almost as if deformed, and his left hand had an unmistakable twist. It was the Clutching Hand.
It was as though one sensed acutely the crouching of some Thing in its lair waiting silently, viciously, with sullen patience. A footstep sounded another. Jimmie Dale drew quickly back around the corner into an areaway. Two men passed in helmets swinging their nightsticks that beat was always policed in pairs!
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