Chapter 17

In the 'forties the room at the back of Stroud's Bar and Grill had been fitted with blackout curtains, which were immediately drawn shut, nevermore to be opened. In the centre of this room stood a table covered with a crimson cloth, upon which a white cross was embroidered. At the extremities of the cross stood four white candles that shed the only light in the room. Six men stood around the table—five in red hoodwinks and robes, and a portly stranger in lime green—the Grand Dragon of the Realm of Virginia.

Exalted Cyclops Stroud spoke: 'The reason I called us here together, despite all the hard work we done already today and the further hard work we got before us tomorrow, is that I've learned something concerning a member of this Den—I refer to Owen Gann—that couldn't wait even so much as one night to be told. You wouldn't have an idea what I found out— would you, Pete?'

Peter Boggs stirred uneasily, remembering Gann's strange behaviour of that afternoon. But no—he shook his head inside the loosely fitted hoodwink—he had no idea, no, nothing to say. But he was glad the hoodwink prevented: the other men from seeing the worried look on his face.

'Because he seemed particularly interested in talking to you' 'He came round today asking after my car, but I sold it to someone else, meantime. I was going to tell him tonight out at the big Klonclave, and then you made me come away with the bunch of you. What's Owen done?'

'Maybe he was only pretending to be interested in your car. Just like he pretends to be a Klansman.'

'Come to the point, Cyclops,' the figure in green said with a portentous rustle of silk.

'The point is just this—that Owen Gann is an agent of the Federal Bureau of In-vestigation.' Farron paused to savour the sensation he had caused. It wasn't every Exalted Cyclops that could expose a traitor like Gann in the presence of an officer of the Grand Realm. 'So, I guess we ought to form a tri-bunal. The Kleron's here. The Klexter and Klailiff's here. And I swear on this Bible, by the Lord God Almighty, that what I'm about to say is the truth, so help me. And Pete, since you're a friend of Owen's'—Pete shook his head in violent disagree-

merit—'since you're the nearest thing he's got to a friend, I thought you could defend him. After all, this is a democracy and we got to do things fair and legal.' Farron throughout his testimony affected to ignore the Grand Dragon, whose presence was, in theory, of no moment at the trial of a Den member.

'Today, about noontime this Owen Gann came around to the Bar asking after our Kladd Boggs here, and I observed at that time that this Gann sort of stunk. He had some kind of perfume all over him, and I ast him how he got perfume on him that way, and he said he'd made a delivery—that's what he does for a cover, he delivers Spengler's Beer—to this cat-house, only he never said what cathouse, and it didn't occur to me at that time to ask him. But later on I started getting suspicious, something didn't seem quite right, so I did some detective work, the F.B.I, ain't the only ones that can...'

'Yes, yes,' the Grand Dragon said impatiently. 'You're a goddamn Sherlock Holmes. Get on with it'

'The long and the short of it was that I went oyer to Bessy's...'

'Bessy's?'

'That's a cathouse here. You probably wouldn't know about it. It's in an undertaker's, or used to be.'

The green silk rustled affirmatively. 'I have heard of it.'

'Anyhow the place was all stunk up with the same kind of perfume, so I ast the nigger-girl there, casual-like, if they'd had a big beer delivery that morning. She says no, and I says, like I'm joking, then how come I smelled your perfume all over the Spengler's Beer delivery men this morning? And she says, "Ha! He ain't no more a Spengler's Beer delivery man than I am." And I said, "What do you mean by that?" And she says, "He's a federal agent, that's what!" He'd come around there that morning asking after some ex-convict or somebody that used to hang around with Bessy. He searched the place upstairs and down looking for this guy, which he wouldn't of done if he was just a beer delivery man. So you couldn't have clearer proof than that.'

'What does the Defence have to say?' asked the Klailiff.

The Defence had very little to say, since the Defence, though it tended to like the defendant personally, had its own reasons for supposing Farron's accusations to be true. Pete had heard of Bittle's and the other man's murders, and he'd been all day wondering if he should go to the police and tell them about Owen's visit. Now, it seemed, Owen was the police. So the defence could only suggest weakly that Gann be given a chance to defend himself before his accuser, the nigger whore. He was a white man, after all, and white men were entitled to a fair trial.

'What you say is true,' said the Grand Dragon in a weighty (if unofficial) manner. 'However, we should consider that if he lives to see what we got lined up tomorrow night, and then lives to tell about it in a Federal court, we may find ourselves on trial instead of him. Of course, I don't have any business speaking out. It's your affair, handle it your way.'

'Nevertheless, boys, the Grand Dragon's got a point worth considering,' Farron said with an obsequious smile, invisible behind his hoodwink.

The judges did not spend very much time considering the Grand Dragon's point.

'Death,' said the Kleron, snuffing out one of the candles between his thumb and forefinger.

'Death,' echoed the Klexter, extinguishing a second candle.

'Death,' said the Klailiff cheerfully, putting out the third. 'I think we can trust Farron to look after the details. The important thing is to get rid of Gann without bringing the whole damned F.B.I, down on our necks.'

Farron pulled off his hoodwink with a short predatory laugh. 'I've got it all figured out. Gann's going to have to trail along behind us all day tomorrow, so's he can spy on us, right? It wouldn't surprise me at all, knowing how these niggers have been riled up and agitated by Northerners, if one of them niggers was to shoot his head off. On account of his being in the Klan. Them niggers can be pretty vicious when they get the opportunity.'

He winked broadly, becoming for a moment truly a Cyclops. Then he snuffed out the last candle. The meeting was adjourned.

He lay upon the bed as he had fallen into it, fully dressed. The overalls were soaked with sweat, his hair matted wetly to his brow. He had been dreaming. There had been chains in the dream, but he remembered no more than that. A nightmare, surely. He needed a cigarette. His head felt as though the sutures of the skull were being forced apart by a knife blade, the way an oyster is opened.

It was a hangover, but not from drinking. From guilt. He sat up in the creaking bed to fumble on the table-top for a pack of cigarettes. Inadvertently he caught sight of himself in the dresser mirror. It was not a pleasant sight.

Smile, you sonofabitch, he thought. You deserve every nightmare you get. Obligingly the face smiled. He hated himself. Christ, how he hated himself.

Could it have been only a part of the nightmare perhaps? No, the old Negro man that had been half whipped to death last night had been as solidly flesh and blood as the hand that held the match to the cigarette now, that trembled. The only difference was that this hand was white.

The dream came back then, brief as a flash of lightning. The Klan had been a part of it, except their robes were black instead of white. They wore black hoods, like medieval executioners. The air was perfumed with evil, and the wooden floor was slimed with the blood of their earlier victims, the white man and the coloured man. He was their victim now. He was black. His face, his arms, his fingertips, his bleeding torso, all black, and this metamorphosis was more painful to him than the actual pain that the black-robed Klansmen inflicted on him. And then the memory of the dream, evanescent as the memory of a perfume, slipped out of mind.

The phone rang. He glanced at his alarm clock. It was half past nine. 'Gann here,' he said into the receiver.

'There may be a break in the Raleigh case, Gann.' It was Madding. 'A call came in yesterday from Stan's bookshop on Truslove Street. You probably know the place. The owner's gone to jail a couple of time on pornography charges. He found the copy of Just-So Stories that we advertised for. He called in yesterday when everyone was out at Bittle's cabin, and again this morning. Shrewd fellow—wouldn't give us any idea of how he got hold of it until we'd brought the money over to him.'

'And then—when he'd been paid?'

'His story is that a little girl brought it in. She fits Alice Raleigh's description pretty well except for one small detail. The kid was black as sin. She was wearing a dirty red check dress, and that is the only thing we know besides her colour. It looks like four hundred dollars down the drain. The kid probably found the book in a garbage can, but we're not likely now to find out where that garbage can was. Except we know the Raleigh kid must be in Norfolk. Just thought you should know.'

'I should. Thanks. Any word yet on the girl's father? Is he still missing?'

'Yes, the last I heard. I also heard the meeting last night was pretty rough. That old Negro is in the hospital.'

'I'll write up the report this morning and mail it to you.'

'Do. And cheer up, Gann. This should be the last day of this nightmare.' Madding hung up.

The enlightenment and the horror came upon him in the same instant, as if, this time, the lightning had flickered over the interior landscape of his mind long enough for him to make out the features. He remembered how, in the dream, he had pleaded with his executioners, trying to persuade them that it was only dirt that made his hands black. But it was dirt that would not wash away.

He knew there were pills that would turn a white man dark temporarily. He knew that Alice Raleigh had been made to take such a pill, and that she had been the little coloured girl that had sold Just-So Stories to Stan's bookshop, the same little coloured girl whom he had seen yesterday at Green Pastures Funeral Home. He tried to remember her features, but in his memory the girl's face was only a dark blur, a composite of all the faces of all the coloured children he had ever seen. He realised what a perfect disguise her black skin had been. It made her well nigh invisible to a man like himself.

But she had worn, he recalled a red check dress, and she had worn sunglasses inside the house. To conceal her blue eyes?

It was, of course, entirely improbable. He knew better than to suggest his theory (though it was already, for himself, a certainty) to Madding. Not till he had proof. And the proof was no farther away than Green Pastures. He could be there by 9.45 if he didn't take time to shave.