The desk lamp had been placed on the floor and focused into his face. It supplied the only light.

His eyes were closed, and he looked near death. But Leila knew intuitively that he was conscious and alert. The knowledge kept her from fainting, but it didn’t help her terror.

The white man knelt beside him with a bloodstained knife pressed tightly against his throat. He had used the knife to slit Casper’s eyelids and jab inside his nostrils and slash his tongue, and he had threatened to use it next to relieve him of his manhood.

His coarse black hair was still plastered to his head, but his nostrils had whitened at the corners. He stared at Leila from black eyes that had the bright enameled look of a snake’s.

“Who’s she?” he asked as though without interest.

“I don’t know, she came up here with her own key.”

“I’m Leila Holmes,” she said in a voice that sounded as though her tongue had stuck to her teeth.

“Casper’s whore,” the white man said, getting to his feet. “Hold her, I’ll stab her.”

Leila whimpered and pushed closer to the lookout for protection. “You’re not going to let that cracker hurt me,” she begged in a tiny terror-stricken voice.

Suddenly, there was a horse of another color.

The black lookout shoved her to one side and drew his .38 automatic. He didn’t aim it at the white man, but he showed it to him.

“I ain’t going for that,” he muttered.

The white man looked at him without expression.

“Go back and keep watch,” he ordered.

“Door’s locked,” the lookout said.

“Go back anyway.”

The lookout didn’t move. “What you going to do with her?”

“Kill her, goddammit, what you think?” the white man said flatly. “You think I’m going to let her live and send me to the chair?”

“We can use her to make him talk,” the lookout argued.

“You think he’s going to talk to save this whore?”

Leila had inched over to the partition separating the two rooms and now began edging slowly toward the inside window.

“Don’t let him kill me,” she begged in her little-girl’s voice to keep their attention distracted.

Her mouth was open; the tip of her tongue slid across her dry lips to make the red paint glisten. She stuck out her breasts and made her body sway as though her pelvic girdle was equipped with roller bearings. She was playing her sex along with her race for all it was worth; but her big brown eyes were dark pools of terror.

The white man turned his back on the lookout and moved toward her with the knife held in a stabbing position.

The second colored man said, “Wait a minute; he’s going to shoot you.”

The white man halted but kept staring at Leila without turning around. “What’s the matter with you niggers?” he said. “The bitch has got to be silenced; and we ain’t got all night to fool around.”