But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the city had enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with gray eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows from the row of loungers in front of the hotel.
     "The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray eyes. "Come along."
     It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs.
     "Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of grandmother's farm." A few of the crowd turn their heads, irritated at the interruption, and then turn back again, listening even more intently. The old man is furious at being ignored, his eyes blazing black and furious in his bone-white face. He pushes his way through the crowd, shouldering people aside until he reaches the front of the semicircle which has formed around the girl. She has just begun her final song. Ave, Maria, gratia plena ...
     Jakub, moving among the people at the back of the crowd, hears a disturbance, but cannot see what is happening. By the time he has worked his way to the front, the old harmonica player has gone right up to Katerina and is shouting in her face. She seems unaware of his presence. Taking this for insolence, the old man slaps her sharply on the cheek. The people in the crowd gasp, but do nothing, remaining motionless as though they have lost the ability to move. Katerina's eyes, still unfocussed, fill with tears. Her mouth stops forming the words and hangs open slackly, a thin ribbon of drool stumbling down her chin. But the singing continues. Dominus tecum; benedicta tu in mulieribus ... Enraged, the old man picks up the cassette player and throws it into the water.
     The desk seargeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust Valley farm, Ulster County, and then bagan to take descriptions of the strong-arm gentlemen.
     When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was received over the head of the office boy into the inner office that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown.