"You'd better dust off your own skirts before criticizing me, Sister Perry," he croaked.

The silence became weighted.

Baby Sis chose that moment to say in a loud drunken voice, "What I want to know, Reverend Short, is how in the world did you get outside that door?"

The tension broke. Everyone laughed.

"I was pushed out of the bedroom window," Reverend Short said in a voice that was sticky with evil.

Baby Sis doubled over, started to laugh, caught sight of Reverend Short's face and chopped it off in the middle of the first guffaw.

The others who had started to laugh stopped abruptly. Dead silence dropped like a shroud over the revelry. The guests stared at the Reverend Short in pop-eyed wonder. Their faces wanted to continue laughing, but their minds pulled the reins. On the one hand, the expression of suppressed vindictiveness on Reverend Short's face could easily be that of a man who'd been pushed out of a window. But on the other hand, his body didn't show the effects of a three-story fall to the concrete sidewalk.

"Chink Charlie did it," Reverend Short croaked.

Mamie gasped. "What!"

"You kidding or joking?" Alamena said harshly.

Baby Sis was the first to recover. She laughed experimentally and gave Reverend Short an appreciative push.

"You takes the cake, Reverend," she said.

Reverend Short clutched her arm to keep from falling. She grinned the imbecilic admiration of one practical joker for another.

Mamie turned in a squall of fury and slapped her face.

"You get yourself right straight back to that kitchen," she said sternly. "And don't you dast drink another drop of likker tonight."

Baby Sis's face puckered up like a dried prune and she began blubbering. She was a big strong-bodied mulelike young woman, and crying gave her an expression of pure idiocy. She turned to run back to the kitchen but stumbled over a foot and fell drunkenly to the floor. No one paid her any attention because, with her support withdrawn, Reverend Short began to fall.