double-jointed man with fallen arches and flat feet. He ran as though his feet were made of beef filets and the streets were paved with broken glass, using his arms like a windmill to keep him afloat. But he was putting his heart into it. He didn't know how much he would have to do, nor how much time he would have to do it in.
2
The colored corporal in charge of the street detail rushed to the nearest police telephone box and telephoned the Homicide Bureau.
Elder Jones, at Sweet Prophet's direction, dashed to the nearest drugstore and telephoned the police precinct station for an ambulance.
Some well-meaning person telephoned the fire department.
Someone else telephoned Harlem's great undertaker, H. Exodus Clay.
It was Sunday, and all of them were delayed; but the undertaker's hearse got there first. The regular driver, Jackson, was attending the First Baptist church with his wife, Imabelle, when the call came in, so the relief driver took it.
He was a young man without much experience, but eager to make good. Mr. Clay told him to get a death certificate before bringing the body in. When he got to the scene there was no one present to give him the necessary death certificate, and he didn't have time to wait.
He grabbed the body, loaded it into the wicker basket, shoved the basket into the hearse and took off with the siren wide open before the police realized what was happening. He gripped the steering wheel in a death grip and stared at the onrushing street with a fanatical look.
The first place he went to was Harlem Hospital. They told him they couldn't give him a death certificate, but they would examine the body in the emergency receiving room and telephone the police for him.
'Hell with that!' he said. He didn't have time for all that foolishness.
From Harlem Hospital he drove furiously to Knickerbocker Hospital, also located in Harlem.
The doctors there, after listening to his request, told him he had better take the body to the morgue, where he could find an assistant medical examiner on duty who would issue the necessary certificate.
By the time the police got on the job of tracing his movements, he was heading south, down the East Side Highway at eighty-five miles an hour, making for the morgue on First Avenue at 29th Street.
Directly after the hearse had left the scene, Sweet Prophet called for his Rolls Royce, and was driven rapidly to his Temple of Wonderful Prayer around the corner on 116th Street. Anticipating all sorts of trouble from the hard-boiled Homicide police, he desired to face them on his home ground.
The others arrived consecutively:
First, two fire trucks bringing oxygen tents and inhalators;
Second, the Assistant Medical Examiner, who had been alerted by the Homicide Bureau;
And last, a big black sedan from the Homicide Bureau Itself, with a uniformed driver, bearing three plain- clothes detectives, a sergeant and two corporals.
By then the body was gone, the prophet was gone, the witnesses were gone, the bottle which had contained the allegedly poisoned water was gone, and Sugar Stonewall was long gone.
Now, more than an hour had passed since Alberta Wright had swallowed the first gulps of the water from the bottle Sweet Prophet had blessed, and Sweet Prophet was sitting behind a hand-carved mahogany desk in his sumptuous 'Receiving Room' on the third-floor front of his Temple of Wonderful Prayer. Across from him, in the high-backed period chairs usually assigned to the supplicants, sat three detectives. They were enclosed, as it were, by an invisible wall, behind which the room was jammed to the walls by as many of the prophet's followers as could squeeze inside. Others jammed the outside hallways and staircases, and hundreds stood below on the street.
The temple was a four-storied apartment building, housing a modern motion picture theater, which Sweet Prophet had converted into his Church of Wonderful Prayer. His living quarters were on the top floor.
The Homicide sergeant was saying, 'Now all I want to do is get the picture straight while the Medical Examiner locates the body and determines the cause of death. There has been some confusion here.'
'The Lord shall confound the wicked,' Sweet Prophet said.
'Amen,' said the followers.
The sergeant, a tall, lean hatchet-faced Irishman named Ratigan, blinked. 'As to that, we'll soon find out,' he said. 'You were baptizing these people?'
'They had answered to the call, and the Sweet Prophet was opening the gates to God's green pastures so that they may graze in faith with God's chosen flock,' Sweet Prophet said.
'Amen,' the faithful said.
'Just stick to the answers, Reverend,' Sergeant Ratigan said.
'I am a prophet,' Sweet Prophet said. 'God called to me at the corner of this very street and Lenox Avenue more than thirty-three years ago. It was a Saturday night and the street was filled with sinners-pimps and prostitutes and thieves. God touched me on the shoulder. I looked around and saw nobody. He said, 'I am God. I make you my prophet on Earth. I send you forth to save these people from degradation and damnation!' '
'Praise be God and bless Sweet Prophet,' the faithful said.
'Jesus Christ, do these people have to be here?' Ratigan said, gritting his teeth. 'They are interfering with the questioning, obstructing the police and loitering, all of which is against the law.'
'They are humble, very humble,' Sweet Prophet said. He tossed a handful of bread crumbs onto the floor, touching off a mad scramble. 'See how humble we all are,' he stated to the bug-eyed detectives. 'We will even eat off the floor for Sweet Prophet.'
Many of the faithful were lapping the crumbs from the thick purple carpet.
'All right, all right, stop feeding them crumbs and let's get back to the killing,' Sergeant Ratigan said harshly.
'There was no killing,' Sweet Prophet denied. 'No killing and no death. There was a departure. A saint departed for heaven.'
'The question is, did any human dispatch her on her way?' Ratigan said.
'None! No human hand was raised against her,' Sweet Prophet said.
'Who poisoned the bottle of water?' Sergeant Ratigan asked.
'The water was not poisoned,' Sweet Prophet denied. 'I blessed it with my own hand.'
'How is it then that she died after drinking it?' Ratigan asked.
'If you think she died from drinking that water, bring me a gallon of it and I will drink it all,' Sweet Prophet said.
'What did she do for a living?' the sergeant asked.
'She was a cook for a white family in Westchester County,' Sweet Prophet said.
'What kind of woman was she?' Ratigan asked.
'An upright, God-fearing, Christian woman,' Sweet Prophet said.
'Do you have any idea why someone might want to poison her?' Ratigan asked.
'No one would have ever wanted to poison her,' Sweet Prophet stated emphatically. 'She was a great cook and a steady wage-earner. No one on God's green earth would poison that type of woman.'
'How about a jealous husband or a disgruntled lover?' the sergeant asked.
'Only the Almighty Father, who is swayed neither by the color of the skin nor the smartness of the brain, but judges only by the sincerity of the heart, would have called Sister Wright from her life on Earth to offer her a seat in heaven-as useful as she was to everybody,' Sweet Prophet said.
One of the four gilded telephones on the desk began to ring. Sweet Prophet looked at them without moving, and a sedately dressed middle-aged woman, who had been standing impassively by the wall behind him, stepped forward and miraculously picked up the right one.
'The blessed Sweet Prophet's Temple of Wonderful Prayer,' she enunciated in a well-modulated voice.
The harsh sound of a voice at the other end came into the room, but the words were indistinct.
'Very well,' the woman replied and, looking up toward the sergeant, said, 'It is for you, sir, if you are Sergeant Ratigan.'
