her, her head awhirl. Gunmen, gangsters, hi-jackers, sluggers, safe-blowers—so the newspapers plainly named them—gathered not only with impunity but prepared today a great parade. She heard talk of it beside her and discerned that several of the passengers were taking a holiday to view the amazing spectacle. They seemed to have informed themselves where to go and, with never another thought of Mr. Hoberg's office, Joan changed trains and followed the people bound for the funeral pageant.
From the elevated station, where she alighted, Joan descended to a street lined with cars parked, fender to fender. Uniformed traffic police, aided by mounted men and a motorcycle detail, kept open a narrow lane in the center of the street wherein cars crawled, scraping on one another. The walks on both sides were black with crowds skewing and pushing forward in the direction in which heads in all the windows turned. Spectators packed the porches and porch steps and the balconies of the buildings; even upon the roofs, spectators stood. Joan saw thousands and thousands.
"Who are they here for?" she whispered to a man pressed against her in the crowd.
"That's where he lived, ahead," the man answered, in lowered voice.
"Who?"
"The big fellow—Baretta."
So she heard that all this was, indeed, for Baretta, for him whom she believed she had shot; and she gasped.
"Feelin' faint, sister?" the man inquired, with eager solicitude, offering her aid.
She thanked him and worked away from him.
A hand, with the grasp of authority, clasped her wrist and a man, whose features she vaguely recognized, signaled her to follow him out of the crowd.
