Queensboro Bridge is the most northerly of Manhattan's four East River bridges. Its mile and a half of mighty steel structure reaches from Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street well into Queens County, Long Island. Far below it in the middle of the river is Blackwells Island, on the south end of which is one of the city hospitals. The rest of this island is the cheerless home of an ever-changing group of those unfortunates, who through some unkind trick of fate have slipped, or have seemed to slip, into that uncharted realm vaguely called "Without the Law."