What should he do?
Should he wait across the street?
Should he knock at the door and ask to be admitted?
No; he must skulk in the dark, on the opposite side.

He picked his way over the street and stood for a moment in the denser black.
A step?
He trained his ear.

But even as he did so his arms were grasped firmly and twisted behind his back, and at the same time a cloth was wrapped round the lower part of his face, leaving only his eyes and nose visible.

It was all so sudden and unexpected that he was passive the first few seconds; after that there was some scuffling, strenuous, too.
He was fighting against three.

Desperately he surged this way and that.
Even in the heat of battle he wondered a little why no one struck him; they simply clung to him, and at length he could not move.