"Is it there?" someone in back asked.

"Does they see it?"

"There's a basket of some kind, sure enough," Alamena said.

"But it don't look like it's no bread in it," the man peering over her shoulder said.

"It don't even look like a bread basket," Mamie said, trying to penetrate the early morning shadows with her near-sighted gaze. "It looks like one of them wicker baskets they take away dead bodies in."

By then Alamena's sharp vision had become accustomed to the dark.

"It's a bread basket, all right. But there's a man already lying in it."

"A drunk," Mamie said in a voice of relief. "No doubt that's what Reverend Short saw that gave him the idea of fooling us."

"He don't look drunk to me," said the man who was leaning over her shoulder. "He's lying too straight, and drunks always lay crooked."

"My God!" Alamena exclaimed in a fear-stricken voice. "He's got a knife sticking in him."

Mamie let out a long moaning keen. "Lord, protect us, can you see his face, child? I'm getting so old I can't see a lick. Is it Chink?"

Alamena put her arm about Mamie's waist and slowly pulled her from the window.

"No, it ain't Chink," she said. "It looks to me like Val."

4

Everyone rushed toward the outside door to be the first downstairs. But before Mamie and Alamena could get out the telephone began to ring.

"Who in the hell could that be at this hour?" Alamena said roughly.

"You go ahead, I'll answer it," Mamie said. Alamena went on without replying. Mamie went back into the bedroom and lifted the receiver of the telephone on the nightstand beside the bed.