e to the south the opposing pincer was
feeling its way along Soto Street into Boyle Heights. It was only with
the greatest difficulty that I passed through the police lines into the
doomed district.

If I had thought deserted Beverly Boulevard a sad sight only three days
before, what can I say about my impression of the city's nerve center in
its last hours? Abandoned automobiles stood in the streets at the spot
where they had run out of gas or some minor mechanical failure had
halted them. Dead streetcars, like big game stopped short by the
hunter's bullet, stayed where the failure of electricpower caught them.
The tall buildings reeked of desertion as if their emptying had dulled
some superficial gloss and made them dim and colorless.

But contrast the dying city with the wall of living green, north, west,
and south, towering ever higher and preparing to carry out the sentence
already passed, and the victim becomes insignificant in the presence of
the executioner. I was reminded of the well where Gootes died for here
except on one small side the grass rose like the inside of a stovepipe
to the sky; but I suffered neither the same despair nor the
unaccountable elation I had upon that hill, perhaps because the trough
was so much bigger or because the animate thing was not beneath my feet
to communicate those feelings directly.

There had evidently been some looting, not so much from greed as from
the natural impulse of human nature to steal and act lawlessly as soon
as police vigilance is relaxed. Here and there stores were opened
nakedly to the street, their contents spilled about. But such scenes
were surprisingly rare, the hopelessness of transporting stolen or any
other possessions acting as a greater deterrent than morality. One way
or another, as the saying has it, crime does not pay.

Few people were visible and these were divided sharply into two
categories: those clearly intent upon concluding some business, rushing
furiously, papers, briefcases or articles of worth in their hands; and
those obviously without purpose, dazed, listless, stumbling against the
curbstones as they shambled along, casting furtive glances toward the
green glacier in the background.

The newspaper office contained only people of the first type. Le ffacase
had come out of his sanctuary for the first time within memory of
anybody on the staff. Still collarless, snuffbox in hand, he
napoleonically directed the removal of those valuabl