they could hear the measures of Chopin's Marche Funèbre played by a stringed orchestra; then the Dead March from Saul and the voice of a solo tenor.
Calvin thought to himself and soon said aloud to Ellison: "It might be the funeral of the first citizen of the city."
"It is," retorted Ellison. "Ask the man on the street—or on a roof, if you prefer. It's his idea exactly."
"It can't be!"
"Then what's the attraction? Why're they here? We're on business, but they're not."
"Curiosity," argued Calvin against himself as well as against Ellison, who agreed; "there's some of that; but curiosity doesn't fill two houses with flowers for the sake of seeing them; and only some of them came here. Twenty trucks, the boys say, went to the cemetery. Ever see a street crowd in tears from curiosity?"
Not all of the street crowd, not even most of the street crowd, were in tears; but many people were, Calvin saw. Men and women, especially in the line emerging from the house, wept. These people did not believe, Calvin realized, that Baretta was the slayer of Adele Ketlar; they did not consider him one of the men in the car who had fired at the machine in the ditch; undoubtedly they altogether denied his presence at the ditch; yet they must know how he had made himself powerful and rich; any one who knew him must know that he had lived, as he had died, by the gun. Yet here they thronged by thousands to honor him.
By thousands, they bared their heads; and the police, who circulated through the crowd searching the most suspicious characters for pistols and slung shots, desisted momentarily as the coffin was borne to the hearse. Behind the actual bearers marched, in double file, a selected party of men.
