A misting rain was being swirled about by a temperish wind as Larry came out into the little street.

Down toward the river the one gaslight glowed faintly like an expiring nebula; all the little shops were closed; home lights gleamed behind the curtained windows which the storm had closed; so that the street was now a little canyon of uncertain shadows.
Larry had not needed to think to know that Gavegan would be making his vindictive approach from the westerly regions where lay Headquarters.
So, keeping in the deeper shadows close to the building, Larry took the eastern course of the street, remembering in a flash a skiff he had seen tethered to a scow moored to the pier which stretched like a pointer finger from the little Square.

As yet he had no plan beyond the necessity of the present moment, which was flight.

Could he but make that skiff unseen and cast off, he would have time, in the brief sanctuary which the black river would afford him, to formulate the wisest procedure his predicament permitted him.
As he came near that smothered glow-worm of a street-lamp it assumed for him the betraying glare of a huge spot-light.

But it had to be passed to gain the skiff; and with collar turned up and hat-brim pulled down and head hunched low, he entered the dim sphere of betrayal, walked under its penny's-worth of flame, and glided toward the shadows beyond, his eyes straining with the preternatural keenness of the hunted at every stoop and doorway before him.
He was just passing out of the sphere of mist-light--the lamp being now at his back helped him--when he saw three vague figures lurking half a dozen paces ahead of him.