“Remember this house, boy?” Lawson asked casually.

“Yes, sir,” he answered. “It belongs to Mr. Peabody. But I don’t work here, mister. I work next door and they ain’t home yet . . .”

“We know all about that,” Lawson said in a voice whose tone indicated that he had access to a vast knowledge.

They pulled him out of the car and led him up the steps.

“This is Mr. Peabody’s house,” he protested.

“You mean it was Mr. Peabody’s house,” Johnson said.

He was brought to the front door and he stood with Murphy and Johnson holding his arms. Well, Mr. or Mrs. Peabody would surely tell these men that he had never been in their house, and that would settle this thing once and for always. But no one rang the bell; instead, they watched him.

“There’s the bell,” he told them, pointing.

Lawson laughed softly.

“You’re certainly the coldest goddamn black sonofabitching raping nigger killer I ever laid eyes on,” Murphy said. “You know damn well nobody can answer that bell. There’s no one there . . .”

“I didn’t know nobody was there,” he mumbled in confusion, doubting his own logic, skeptical of the real world that hovered before his eyes.

“You do know it!” Lawson snarled. “You killed ’em!”

Stupidly, he stared at them; then an irresistible smile broke on his lips. Out here in this sunshine, amid these normal and familiar sounds, it was impossible that these men were seriously accusing him of murder.

“Mister, I wouldn’t do a thing like that,” he said in a voice that betokened that he was talking confidentially to a close and trusted friend.

“I’ll be damned,” Lawson said. “Murphy, unlock the door.”

Murphy took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock and turned it and swung the door open.

“Step in, boy,” Lawson said.

He hesitated, looking into their faces.

“Get the hell in!” Lawson said, giving him a shove.

He stumbled through and stood apprehensively in a dim hallway. What were they going to do with him? They had accused him of having killed Mr. and Mrs. Peabody, but surely they did not really mean that. He had not been in this house in his life. Yes, Mr. and Mrs. Peabody would come out of some room at any moment now and tell them that they were wildly wrong, and then he would wake up out of this mad dream.

“All right, take ’im upstairs,” Lawson said.

Lawson led the way; Murphy and Johnson caught his arms and he walked up the stairs between them. At the top of the steps they paused.

“All right,” Lawson said impatiently, “what in hell are you waiting for? Take ’im on in.”

“Okay,” Johnson said.

He was led to a door, which Murphy flung open; he expected a voice to sound imperiously, demanding that this be stopped. He stood in the doorway, his lips open, blinking his eyes at a deluge of golden light. The array of images that caught his eyes was of such a nature that he stood for a full minute without really knowing what he saw. Then he recoiled, his breath whistling through his teeth, his knees bending to leap. Some protective part of his mind kept his eyes from believing what he saw, kept the meaning of the strange images from registering in his consciousness. The room looked as if some hurricane had swept through it, wrecking everything. There was evidence of a gory, mortal struggle. The bed was piled high with tumbled, white sheets that showed red stains. The curtains had been ripped from the windows and lay in stringy strips on the floor. On the green wall near the bed were many blobs of red spatter. The drawers of two chests were pulled out at different distances and clothing was half-spilled. A small desk lay smashed. A table was overturned. The mirror of a vanity was shattered and splinters of glass glinted in all directions. A grey rug held viscid pools of dark liquid.