Free In the Heat of the Night by John Ball

man, but I’ll stop at nothing to see that the murder—that the person who did what he did to the maestro is captured and made to pay.” His voice broke. “To strike him down like that, a man like him! Not even to give him a chance. Please, do your very best!”
    Sam wondered how much of the speech was sincere and how much was calculated to impress the girl. He must know her well, Sam thought, and perhaps … He did not let himself finish the thought. Unreasonably he wished that the girl had somehow risen out of the ground that day so that he might be the first to know her and to take care of her.
    He decided he was losing his grip and it was time to toughen up.
    Virgil Tibbs excused himself and they climbed into the car. Sam started the engine and turned down the road that led back to the city. When they were safely out of range of the house, he spoke. “Did you make any progress?”
    “Yes, I did,” Tibbs answered him.
    Sam waited for a fuller explanation, then found he had to ask for one. “Such as what, Virgil?”
    “Mostly background on Mantoli and the music festival. The Endicotts are strong local sponsors. What they had set up here was what they hoped would develop into another Tangle wood or the Bethlehem Bach Festival. Some projects of that kind have been highly successful.”
    “Most of us around here regarded the whole thing as being nuts,” Sam said.
    “The response from the advance announcements was surprisingly good,” Tibbs added. “I don’t know too much about music, but apparently Mantoli had arranged some special programs that had a lot of appeal to the kind of people who come to things like this. At least they were willing to pay good money to sit on logs or camp chairs for a whole evening until the thing was proved a success and something better put in.”
    “How about something that will help us with the problem we’ve got right now? Anything that might point to who did it?”
    “Possibly,” Tibbs answered vaguely. He added, “Mr. Endicott has asked to have Mantoli’s body moved to the undertaker’s as soon as possible.”
    Sam waited a moment and then gave up. “What next?” he asked.
    “Let’s go back to the station. I want to see that fellow Oberst they’re holding there.”
    “I forgot about him,” Sam confessed. “What are you going to do to him?”
    “I want to talk to him,” Tibbs answered. “After that a lot depends on how much leeway Gillespie is going to give me.”
    They drove the rest of the way in silence. As he guided the car down the turns of the winding road, Sam tried to decide whether or not he wanted the man sitting beside him to succeed in what he had undertaken. In his mind he saw a clear picture of Duena Mantoli; then, as a projector shifts slides, he saw Gillespie and, without looking at him, the Negro by his side. That was what hurt. An outsider might be all right if he were a good fellow and all that, but the idea of a black man stuck up like a jagged rock in the middle of a channel. By the time they had reached the police station, Sam had still not made up his mind. He wanted the crime solved, but he wanted it solved by someone whom he could look up to and respect. The only trouble was he couldn’t think who it might be.

CHAPTER
6
    V IRGIL T IBBS STOPPED at the desk and made a request. Then he disappeared in the direction of the colored washroom to allow time for it to be considered and for Gillespie to be consulted. The chief was out of the building so the desk man had to make his own decision. After recalling his instructions carefully, he made up his mind, called Arnold, and asked him to admit Tibbs to Harvey Oberst’s cell.
    When the steel door swung partly open, Oberst half rose to his feet. “You don’t have to put him in here,” he protested. “Put him someplace else. I don’t want no nig—”
    The steel door clanked shut. “He wants to talk to you,” Arnold said acidly, and left. Oberst sank down on one extreme end of the hard