The result is a story which just misses being a nightmare too rational to be endured. What gives the reader a chance to breathe and even smile is the admixture of some warm human touches and some excellent unforced humor. By a further display of narrative skill, the story is presented by six persons in nineteen varied episodes, leading to a sufficiently grim smash ending, yet without palpable interruption of the relentless "clock". And when all is over the reader-participant in this drama of the big city and the big outfit will reflect with surprise that the tour de force which so gripped him was a mystery without a mystery.