A fear came that he would be smashed by mops and hoes and brooms and rakes, his head beaten, his bones crushed, flesh mashed. Swaying, he rounded the rear corner of the tenement. The muttering mob was still behind him. He felt their nervousness in the turgid thoughts that streamed from them. They had heard stories about slans that suddenly almost overshadowed the desire to possess ten thousand dollars. But the mob presence gave courage to individuals. The mob pressed on.

He emerged into a tiny back yard piled high with empty boxes on one side. The pile reared above him, a dark mass, blurred even in the dazzle of the sun. An idea flashed into his dulled mind, and in an instant he was climbing the piled boxes.

The pain of the effort was like teeth clamped into his side. He ran precariously along over the boxes, and then half lowered himself, half fell into a space between two old crates. The space opened all the way to the ground. In the almost darkness his eyes made out a deeper darkness in the plastic wall of the tenement. He put out his hands and fumbled around the edges of a hole in the otherwise smooth wall.

In a moment he had squeezed through and was lying exhausted on the damp earth inside. Pieces of rock pressed into his body, but for the moment he was too weary to do anything but lie there, scarcely breathing, while the mob raged outside in frantic search.

The darkness was soothing, like his mother's thoughts just before she told him to leave her. Somebody climbed some stairs just above him, and that told him where he was: in a little space underneath back stairs. He wondered how the hard plastic had ever been shattered.

Lying there, cold with fear, he thought of his mother – dead now, the radio had said.