A squall of wind came around the corner just then and buffeted him about the body. He opened his mouth and nostrils. He distended his eyes. He thrust forward his head and listened. “There must ’a been information gev, ’cos how else could they—” a tall lean man was saying, as he stood in the middle of the sawdust-covered floor, holding a pint of black frothing porter in his right hand. Then a burly carter, with a grey sack around his shoulders like a cape, jostled the man who was speaking, in an awkward attempt to cross the floor through the crowd. But the man had said enough. Gypo knew that they were talking about the death of Francis Joseph McPhillip and that they suspected that information had been given. Again the idea came into his head that he must form a plan without a moment’s delay. But the inside of his head was perfectly empty, with his forehead pressing against it, hot and congested, as if he had been struck a violent blow with a flat stick. The idea floundered about in his head, repeating itself aimlessly, like a child calling for help in an empty house. “No,” he muttered to himself, as he gripped his clasp knife fiercely in his trousers pocket, “I can’t make out anythin’ standin’ here in the rain in front of a pub. Better go ahead.” He hurled himself around the corner against the squall into Titt Street with almost drunken violence. Then he realized with terror the fate that menaced him if . . . He saw the groups under the lamp-posts. He saw the flitting women. He saw the youths, hushed, strained, expectant. He heard the rumble of human sound. The dark, sombre, mean street that had been familiar to him until now, suddenly appeared strange, as if he had never seen it before, as if it had suddenly become inhabited by dread monsters that were intent on devouring him. It appeared to him rather, that he had wandered, through a foolish error of judgment, into a strange and hostile foreign country where he did not know the language. He glared about him aggressively, as he walked up the street. He planted his feet on the ground firmly, walking with his legs wide apart, with his shoulders squared, with his head thrust forward into the wind like the jib boom of a ship. As he was passing an open doorway somebody cried “hist.” He halted like a challenged sentry. He wheeled savagely towards the doorway and called out. “Who are cryin’ hist after?” “It’s only me,” chirped an old lady in a clean white apron, a woman he knew well. “I thought ye were Jim Delaney, the coalheaver. I got to whisper on account o’ me throat. I got a cold a fortnight ago, scrubbin’ floors out at Clontarf, an’ it’s getting worse instead of better. The doctor——” But Gypo glanced angrily at her bandaged throat and her dim blue eyes and passed on with a grunt without listening to her further. He arrived at No. 44 and entered through the open door without knocking.