“_Hoosh_. Goo' hoosh. Gran' hoosh. Oh, _hoosh!_” and as if the mention of the word had stricken it back into clothes again it slid slowly down on its back, closed its eyes and began to snore. Oliver, perched on his bunk for what comfort there was, sat and considered. He looked at the bundle--the bars--the bars--the bundle. The bundle wheezed apoplectically--no sound of footsteps came from beyond the bars. Oliver wondered if Nancy loved him. He wondered if he would ever catch that Ten Seven. But most of all he wondered why on earth he had happened to get in here and how on earth he was ever going to get out. XX The sky had been a blue steam all day, but at night it quieted, there were faint airs. From the window of the apartment on Riverside Drive you could see it grow gentle, fade from a strong heat of azure through gray gauze into darkness, thick-soft as a sable's fur at first, then uneasily patterned all at once with idle leopard-spottings and strokes of light. The lights fell into the river and dissolved, the dark wash took them and carried them into streaks of lesser, more fluid light. Even so, if there could have been country silence for five minutes at a time, the running river, the hills so disturbed with light beyond, might have worn some aspect of peace. But even in the high bird's nest of the apartment there was no real silence, only a pretending at silence, like the forced quiet of a child told to keep still in a corner--the two people dining together could talk in whispers, if they wanted, and still be heard, but always at the back of the brain of either ran a thin pulsation of mumbling sound like the buzz of a kettle-drum softly struck in a passage of music where the orchestra talks full-voiced--the night sound of the city, breathing and moving and saying words.