Silas felt the safety of the noon crowds as he walked down the Tinkery’s street. The local commerce and industrial concerns shared a common lunch hour and the foot traffic moving as a mass gave him perfect cover as he limped along, his cane tapping out an even, if not quick, rhythm.
Clement Street at noon on a weekday was a river of people. The printing concern on the north side of the block emptied its afternoon shift out onto the pavement in their ink-stained aprons. The bootmakers two doors down, the tin shop at the corner, the accounting house in the brick building across from the Tinkery all released their people into the same hour, and the pavements on both sides of the street filled with men and women moving toward the food vendors at the Clement and Ninth.
The air smelled of frying onions and coffee. A tram passed, its bell competing with the general noise, and nobody looked up at it.
Nobody looked at Silas either, which was rather the point.
He decided that instead of walking rig…
