“Please,” he whimpered.

“Why did you kill ’em?” Lawson asked, stopping before him.

He did not answer; the three policemen gathered about him and questions came tumbling one after the other.

“Where is the hatchet? You used a hatchet, didn’t you? What did you do with the money you took from the desk? Did you hide it? Did anybody help you with the murder? Come, nigger, talk! Didn’t you plan to rape Mrs. Peabody? When the mailman rang the doorbell at eleven o’clock, he scared you off the woman, didn’t he? When you were through, you went back to work at Mrs. Wooten’s, didn’t you? You thought nobody’s ever going to think you did it, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you-all talking about,” he groaned in desperation and despair.

Lawson grabbed the collar of his shirt and snatched him forward; again he lay sprawled on the floor. He smelt the acrid odor of a cigar butt. Blows came so hard and fast that the sheer pain of them made him realize that they were beating him with a blackjack. He groaned. The toe of a shoe came like a jabbing hot iron into the nape of his neck; he gave a short, involuntary scream. They jerked him to his feet and pushed him again into the chair. He saw a blob of blood on his shirt.

“Do you want to talk now, boy, or do you want some more?”

His lips moved, but no words came. Johnson placed a hand tenderly upon his shoulder.

“Listen, boy, don’t you want to go and see your wife?”

“Yes, sir,” he managed to whisper.

“Then tell us what you did.”

“I . . . I-I ain’t done n-n-nothing . . .”

A fist exploded between his eyes and he went backwards, toppling with the chair; his head struck the wall, banging twice from the force of the blow. Semidarkness seized him and it seemed that he was lying atop a fast moving streetcar, watching many blue sparks of electricity shower down plume-like as contact was made with the high-tensioned trolley wire overhead. The world veered from left to right. Then he was a little boy stealing a ride on the tail end of a speeding truck. . . .

II

Hours later he felt cold water drench his face; with a quick start, he was wide awake. They propped him in the chair and his vision cleared. He saw that there were four men in the room now: Besides Lawson, Johnson, and Murphy, there was a man in a grey business suit. He held a white piece of paper in his hand and leaned toward him.

“I’ve got something here I want you to sign, boy,” the man said. “I’m the District Attorney. Now, listen, I don’t want these men to keep bothering you, see? So just sign your name . . .”

Again habit made him try to answer, but he could form no words.

“Don’t you want to see your wife, boy?” the man in the grey suit asked.