oorway. He had
seen men, mortally stricken, who folded up in that very same way;
therefore he appraised Sonntag as one already dead, or at least as one
who would die very speedily.

As he stepped out across the sidewalk into the roadway he let the
automatic fall alongside the curb. The instant he had done this the heat
of his hate departed from him leaving him cool and clear-minded and
alert. It was as though the hot fumes of rage had all evaporated from
his brain in the same twentieth part of a second that he had spent in
discarding the weapon. For the reason that he was again entirely
himself, resourceful and steady, he did not fall into the error of
running away. To run away in this instant was to invite pursuit.
Instead he walked to the middle of the street, halted and looked about
him--the picture of a citizen who had been startled by the sound of
shots. This artifice, he felt sure, served to disarm possible suspicion
on the part of any one of the persons who came hurrying up from east and
west and from the north, across the street. Two or three of these first
arrivals almost brushed him as they lunged past, drawing in toward the
spot where Sonntag's doubled-up body made a darker blot in the darkened
parallelogram beneath the portico.

Trencher had been in close places before now--close places when
something smacking of violence had occurred--and he knew or felt he knew
what next would happen to give him the precious grace of seconds and
perhaps of minutes. Those who came foremost upon the scene would,
through caution, hesitate for a brief space of time before venturing
close up to where the hunched shape lay. Then having circled and drawn
in about the victim of the shooting they would for another brief period
huddle together, asking excited and pointless questions of one another,
some of them perhaps bending down and touching the victim to see whether
he lived, some of them looking round for a policeman, some of them doing
nothing at all--except confusedly to get in the way of everybody else.
This would be true of ninety-nine average individuals out of an average
hundred of city population. But the hundredth man would keep his wits
about him, seeking for the cause of the thing rather than concerning
himself with the accomplished effect. For the moment it was this
hundredth man Trencher would have to fear. Nevertheless, it would never
do for him to show undue haste. Bearing himself in the matter of a
disintereste