“In going from a given point on 126th Street to the subway station at 125th, it is not usual to begin by circling the block to 127th Street, especially in sleet, darkness, and deadly cold. When two people pursue so unusual a course at the same time, moving unobtrusively on opposite sides of the street, in the nature of things the coincidence is likely to attract the attention of one or the other of them.”

The two figures are immediately suspicious and linked to one another from the story’s opening. The image calls to mind boxers circling in a ring. Harrison sets the stage to subject each character to suspicion and doubt.

“Even in this underground retreat the bitter breath of the night blew and bit, and the old woman shivered under her shawl.”

Harrison uses alliteration to illustrate the chilliness of the evening. He also uses personification in this sentence, bringing the weather in as an antagonist to the scene’s tension. The characters are unable to escape the cold, just as they cannot escape each other.

“‘Jessie Dark,’ it was manifest, was one of those most extraordinary of the products of yellow journalism, a woman ‘crime expert,’ now in action. More than this, she was a ‘crime expert’ to be taken seriously, it seemed—no mere office-desk sleuth, but an actual performer with, unexpectedly enough, a somewhat formidable list of notches on her gun.”

This passage demonstrates the parallels between the antagonist and the protagonist. Both women are “performers” who are taken seriously in their profession. Dark is an expert in her field, and Miss Hinch is an expert in hers. Harrison builds both up to create more tension between them.