"Yes, yes. Go now, please."
She turned him out at last and paused an instant to brace her nerves before joining Amy. At the far end of the hall the parlor door stood ajar, and she saw with a shiver that the shades were down. Then Amy peered from the bedroom in search of her, a grief-stricken figure with wringing hands.
"Don't keep me in here," she moaned. "Let me walk, walk." And she moved toward the darkened room.
"Not there!" Jean cried, preventing her. "Not there!"
Amy stared an instant and then uttered a laugh more terrible than tears.
"He is not in the parlor," she replied. "They took him to an undertaker's. There's a man—I forgot to tell you—there's a man from the undertaker's here now. He wants clothes, black clothes. He's in the spare room, hunting. I—I couldn't touch them. I told him to look for himself. You help him, Jean. I couldn't touch Fred's things. It seemed—oh, I just couldn't!"
Jean let her wander where she would, and opened the guest-room door. A heavy-jowled man pivoted about at her entrance and stuffed a handful of letters into a pocket of one of the dead drummer's coats. The garment was not black.
"What are you doing there?" she demanded. "That coat might answer for a horse-race, not a funeral."
The man had a glib answer ready.
"I took it down to look behind," he said. "The letters fell out."