Even if his hat won't survive, so long as Cain himself survives, he should probably count himself fortunate. He's endured more than a few attacks--both in his own world and in the City, and one does have to wonder when one's good fortune might at last run out.

Not yet, it seems.

But he is dimly aware of a foreboding, of a stirring in the air immediately behind him, of someone unseen now far too close.

He starts at that sense and half turns and would mean to swing the silver knob of his walking stick against whoever his attacker (if it is an attacker at all) might be--it's certainly worked before. The question, of course, is whether it is enough and whether it is soon enough.