her mouth and knelt on the floor.
'Arise, my child,' he said.
She got up from her knees and sat forward on the edge of the chair.
'What is troubling you, my child?' he asked.
'I hate to keep bothering you after you have been so good to get me out of jail,' she said. 'But I'm in big trouble.'
'Tell me about it, my child,' he said.
'It began with my dream,' she confessed. 'When I dreamt about those three pies exploding with hundred dollar bills, I knew The Lord had sent me a message. So I went and played twenty dollars on the money row in the three biggest houses in Harlem. That was all the money I had, sixty dollars, but I knowed The Lord had sent me a message, and I had faith. And just like I believed, my number popped out like it were sent for, and I hit for thirty-six thousand dollars.
'Thirty-six thousand dollars,' Sweet Prophet echoed. 'That is a lot of money, child.'
'Yes, Sweet Prophet, it sure was,' she admitted.
'So the houses have gone back to paying six hundred to one,' he remarked.
'Yes, Sweet Prophet, they pays off good if you got the message,' she said.
'And you had twenty-nine thousand, four hundred dollars left after paying off the commissions?'
'Yes, Sweet Prophet. I had to give the writers the ten per cent which they collects on a hit, and then I had to give the payoff men from each of the houses a thousand dollars for bringing me my money safely. But how did you know?'
'My child, a prophet must know all the workings of sin in order to combat it,' he said.
'But I didn't figure it was no sin if The Lord himself sent me the message,' she argued.
'No, my child, the sin was that you took this money which The Lord sent to you for the expiation of your sins and hid it for your own self, instead of bringing it to Sweet Prophet, who would have taken a share for The Lord, and returned you the rest in safety.'
'How did you know I hid it?' Alberta asked in surprise.
'My child, a prophet knows everything,' he said.
'Then where is it now?' she asked.
'We ain't come to that part yet,' he said testily. 'You ain't finished your confession.'
'I didn't intend to keep it hid, Sweet Prophet,' she resumed. 'I honestly intended to bring it to you for you to take out The Lord's share; but I hadn't got religion then, and I figured I ought to get religion first and get myself baptized so I could come to you in my purity and place the money at your feet for you to give me back in your bounty what you figured I should have. And besides that, Sweet Prophet, my man was away from home when they paid me off, and I figured it would be no greater sin to put temptation in his way. So I hid the money in my mattress, figuring you wouldn't want to deal with the money of a sinner anyway. And so that's why I came to you early Sunday morning and gave you the five hundred dollars-'
'You gave to The Lord through me,' Sweet Prophet corrected, to keep the record straight in case of an inquiry by the income tax collectors.
'Yes, Sweet Prophet, gave to The Lord through you,' Alberta parroted, 'the five hundred dollars for to pay to get baptized.'
'And afterwards you dilly-dallied around for so long before performing this duty to The Lord that the money was stolen,' he said.
'I weren't dilly-dallying around,' she protested. 'It was stolen whilst I was In my trance.'
'The Lord will forgive you,' he consoled her. 'The Lord wouldn't be expecting you to guard your money while you were In a trance.'
'Yes, Sweet Prophet, I believe The Lord will forgive me,' she said. 'But The Lord ain't done it yet. All The Lord has done so far is chastise me. And that's what I can't understand. Why would The Lord want to chastise me by letting my money be stolen whilst I was setting in heaven at His feet?'
'You haven't told me all that happened as yet, Sister Wright,' Sweet Prophet said. 'I can't explain The Lord's actions until I know what you have been up to.'
Alberta recounted in detail everything that had happened to her since her release from the morgue.
'Now they are saying I beat out the Jew-man's brains with a hammer and cut my husband's throat with a knife,' she concluded.
'If they have charged you with that, you are really in big trouble, Sister Wright,' Sweet Prophet admitted. 'But you didn't do it?'
'No, Sweet Prophet, I didn't do it,' she wailed. 'You've got to believe me, Sweet Prophet. I ain't never in all my life hit 'nobody in the head with a hammer hard enough to kill him, and I didn't cut my husband's throat neither, as much as he deserved it.'
'Then why do they think you did it, Sister Wright?' he asked.
'It was because of the knife,' she said. 'They caught me trying to get rid of the knife I found. They said it was the knife that Rufus had been killed with, and, when I saw it lying there, I thought so, too. I didn't know what had happened. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head. I hadn't seen Sugar, and it came to me all of a sudden he might have found out that Rufus had stole my furniture, and I could see them getting into a fight. I figured maybe Sugar might have stabbed Rufus in self-defense, because it would be just like Sugar to throw away the knife and run.'
'If that is what happened, all you have to do is tell the police, and they will arrest Sugar and drop the charges against you,' Sweet Prophet said.
'But he didn't do it,' she declared. 'I'd bet my life he didn't do it. He's so tenderhearted he won't even cut off a chicken's head, and I know he wouldn't have stabbed Rufus all those times.'
'Well, there is one good thing that has come out of it,' Sweet Prophet consoled her. 'The Lord has saved you the trouble and expense of getting a divorce; He has made it possible for you to go and sin no more.'
'Well, that much He sure has done,' Alberta admitted glumly.
'Do the police know about the money you had hidden?' Sweet Prophet asked her, his thoughts taking another tack.
'I didn't tell them,' she said. 'I wanted to ask you first whether I ought to.'
'No, Sister Wright. If you are innocent, don't tell them about the money,' he advised. 'If they learn about the money, they will believe for sure that you are guilty.'
'But what am I going to do, Sweet Prophet?'
'Are you dead sure you left the money in your mattress?' he asked.
'As sure as I'm sure that I'm setting here and you is setting there,' she said.
'Did anyone see you when you hid it?'
'Not unless they got eyes that can see through walls,' she contended. 'The door was locked and the shades were drawn, and I had put Sugar out of the house for the night.'
'How did you know he didn't go back and steal it while you were in your religious trance?' he asked.
'He wouldn't have stole all of it,' she declared. 'I know my Sugar. He would have been too scared of me to steal all of it. That's why I love him. If I got to work to support him, the least he can do is be scared of me. Besides which, why did Rufus and the Jew-man steal my furniture if they weren't looking for the money? I got sense enough to know my furniture weren't worth nothing to nobody but me.'
'How would your estranged husband and the Judaist know about the money if you haven't told anybody, Sister Wright?'
'I don't know, Sweet Prophet. You is the only one I have told, and that's the truth,' she said.
'Somebody knew you had it,' he persisted.
'I don't know who it could have been,' she maintained.
'The man who delivered it knew it,' he pointed out.
'But there were three different payoff men, one from each of the houses,' she argued.
'One of them must have known that you hit in the two other houses,' he stated.
'He didn't find it out from me,' she said. 'I didn't tell nobody.'
'They delivered the money to your home?' he asked.
'Yes, Sweet Prophet, they sent it as soon as the drawings were over.'
