“We have listened to the story told by our fellow Klansmen. Hol’ yo’se’ves ready for the call of the Invisible Empire at any minute. We have planned the way to en’ this dastardly plot and to punish those responsible with death!”
“That’s right! Kill ‘em! Lynch ’em! Burn th’ bastards!” shouted the crowd.
“That’ll be done till ev’ry one is killed!” promised the Exalted Cyclops. “But it can’t be done so’s it can be laid to our noble order! Already our enemies are charging us with crimes! The Fed’ral Gov’nment will be down on our heads!”
There were cries of “Damn the Gov’nment!” from some of the more hot-headed. But calmer judgment prevailed. Something was to be done, but what that ominous “something” might be, was not revealed. Each man was to be ready for instantaneous duty upon call of the Klan. Immediate action was not wise, for the Klan investigators had not completed their work. Action must wait until that had been done, for it was essential that not one of the plotters should escape.
This last point was emphasized. At last the crowd became more calm with the determination to postpone its vengeance until it was certain of being complete. It then dispersed its several ways, dissolving into separate groups that talked excitedly of the astounding and terrifying news, the need of prompt action, the great luck the white folks had had in discovering the plot so soon, violent denunciation of the Negroes in the plot.
In one of the groups the conversation was different. One of the group was the Exalted Cyclops, in private life Sheriff Bob Parker; another was the Kligrapp, otherwise Henry Lane, Commissioner of Health; the third was the speaker who had revealed the plot, Ed Stewart, Tom Tracy’s landlord.
Sheriff Parker chuckled softly. “Well, Ed, looks like somethin’ is about to break loose, eh?” he observed.
“Yep, I reck’n you’re right. Them damn niggers’ve got a hell of a nerve! Formin’ sassieties to ‘stop robbin’ share-croppers’! When we get through with ’em, they’ll be formin’ coal-shov’lin’ sassieties in hell!” The other two joined in the laugh at his grim joke. “We’ll put in th’ papers they was formin’ to kill white folks and they’ll never know but what that ain’t true.”
Parker laughed again. Waving his hand at the departing Klansmen, there came to his face a cynical sneer. “An’ them damn fools really think they’re sho’ly goin’ to be murdered by the damn niggers!”
In another section of Central City there was being enacted at the same time another scene of poignant drama that threatened to translate itself into tragedy. The place was a darkened bedroom in the home of Roy Ewing on Georgia Avenue, and the actors in it were four in number. Roy Ewing, owner and manager of the Ewing General Merchandise Store, whom Kenneth had seen but little since Ewing had discontinued his nocturnal visits to Kenneth’s office, was one of the actors. His wife, whose face still bore evidences of a youthful beauty that was fast fading, was a second. A third was old Dr. Bennett, who sat by the bed, his hair dishevelled, his face lined with perplexity and anxiety, as he apprehensively watched the fourth actor in the drama, a girl of nineteen who was restlessly tossing in pain on the bed. Row Ewing stood at the foot of the bed. His wife sat on the other side uttering little snatches of phrases of soothing sympathy which her daughter did not hear.