Content Warning: This section of the study guide discusses drug and alcohol addictions, as well as domestic violence. The novel features portrayals of racial prejudice and discrimination. The novel also contains dialect commonly used in 1930s Harlem that may be considered stereotypical, insensitive, and/or offensive.

One night on a street in Harlem, a woman observes a group of people at Battery Park, taking in the music and joy around her. They’re listening to a popular song, with the lyrics, “I’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal you” (3). Meanwhile, at 130th Street, a man rushes out of the building where undertaker Samuel Crouch and fortune teller N. Frimbo run their practices and tells the neighboring physician, Dr. John Archer, that something has happened to Frimbo. Dr. Archer goes with the man and his friend across the street to Frimbo’s practice. There, they find him sitting slumped and open-eyed. They carry him downstairs to the front room—Samuel Crouch’s funeral parlor—where Dr. Archer inspects him by palpating his chest and listening for any sounds. He realizes that Frimbo is dead and notices blood on his head, which leads him to believe that he was murdered.