“It’s a gentleman’s agreement,” the old man said.

Grave Digger belched as the ancient elevator creaked upward.

“That lets us out,” Coffin Ed said. “Gentlemen don’t belch.”

“Gentlemen don’t eat pig ears and collard greens,” Grave Digger said. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

The old man gave the appearance of not hearing.

Casper had the whole top floor to himself. It had originally been built for two families with facing doors across a small elevator foyer, but one had been closed and plastered over and there was only the one red-lacquered one left, with a small, engraved brass nameplate in the middle of the upper panel, announcing: Casper Holmes.

“Might just as well say Jesus Christ,” Grave Digger said.

“Go light on this lady, Digger,” Coffin Ed cautioned as he pushed the bell buzzer.

“Don’t I always?” Grave Digger said.

A young black man in a spotless white jacket opened the door. It opened so silently Grave Digger blinked. The young man had shining black curls that looked as though they had been milled from coal tar, a velvet-smooth forehead slightly greasy, and dark-brown eyes, with whites like muddy water, devoid of all intelligence. His flat nose lay against low, narrow cheeks slashed by a thin-lipped mouth of tremendous width. The mouth was filled with white, even teeth.

“Mister Jones and Mister Johnson?” he inquired.

“As if you didn’t know,” Grave Digger said.

“Please come right this way, sirs,” he said, leading them to a front room off the front of the hall.

He came as far as the doorway and left them.

It was a big room with windows overlooking Central Park. In the distance, over treetops, the towers of Rockefeller Center and the Empire Sate Building loomed in the murky haze. It remind in Ed of the lounge of the City Club.

Grave Digger lifted his feet high to keep from stumbling over the thick nap of the Oriental rugs, and Coffin Ed eyed the ornate furniture warily, wondering where he should sit.

Jazz classics were stacked on a combination set, and at their entrance Louis Armstrong was doing an oldy called Where The Chickens Don’t Roost So High.

“Me and my old lady used to dance to that tune at the Savoy—before they tore it down,” Grave Digger said, and started cutting the rug.

He still had on his hat and overcoat, and he was performing the intricate steps of an old-time jitterbug with great abandon. His swollen lips were pecking at the perfumed air, and his overcoat tails were flapping in the breeze.

Coffin Ed stood beside a Louis XIV love seat, scratching his ribs.

“Digger, you’re a pappy,” he said. “Those steps you’re doing went out with zoot suits.”

“Don’t I know it,” Grave Digger said, sighing.

Mrs. Holmes swung into the room from an inner doorway like a stripteaser coming on stage. She stopped short in open-mouth amazement and put her hands on her hips.

“If you want to dance, go to the Theresa ballroom,” she said in a cool contralto voice. “There’s a matinee this afternoon.”