ne and there
were more pressing problems.

He sat up, his hands behind him at the ends of stiff arms clawing into
long-undisturbed dust and filth. His movement stirred the dust and it
rose into his nostrils.

He straightened and banged his head against a low ceiling. The pain made
him sick for a minute and he sat down to regain his senses. He cursed
the ceiling, as a matter of course, in an agonized whisper.

Ready to move again, he got onto his hands and knees and crawled
cautiously forward, exploring as he went. His hand pushed through
cobwebs and found a rough, cement wall. He went around and around. It
was all cement--all solid.

Hell! They hadn't sealed him up in this place! There had been a way in
so there had to be a way out. He went around again.

Then he tried the ceiling and found the opening--a wooden trap covering
a four-by-four hole--covering it snugly. He pushed the trap away and
daylight streamed in. He raised himself up until he was eye-level with a
discarded shaving cream jar lying on the bricks of an alley. He could
read the trade mark on the jar, and the slogan: "For the Meticulous
Man".

He pulled himself up into the alley. As a result of an orderly
childhood, he replaced the wooden trap and kicked the shaving cream jar
against a garbage can. He rubbed his chin and looked up and down the
alley.

It was high noon. An uncovered sun blazed down to tell him this.

And there was no one in sight.

* * * * *

He started walking toward the nearer mouth of the alley. He had been in
that hole a long time, he decided. This conviction came from his hunger
and the heavy growth of beard he'd sprouted. Twenty-four hours--maybe
longer. That mickey must have been a lulu.

He walked out into the cross street. It was empty. No people--no cars
parked at the curbs--only a cat washing its dirty face on a tenement
stoop across the street. He looked up at the tenement windows. They
stared back. There was an empty, deserted look about them.

The cat flowed down the front steps of the tenement and away toward the
rear and he was truly alone. He rubbed his harsh chin. Must be Sunday,
he thought. Then he knew it could not be Sunday. He'd gone into the
tavern on a Tuesday night. That would make it five days. Too long.

He had been walking and now he was at an intersection where he could
look up and down a new street. There were no cars--no people. Not even a
cat.

A sign overhang