Zell
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter Three: Obit Herman Zell Mrs. Gram, the motherly old lady who acted as a sort of canonized stage manager at the monthly baptisms, knocked on his door like a summoning Fate. The significant moment had arrived. His mother, who had helped him undress and put on the flowing robes of the ceremony, kissed him with unsuccessfully concealed agitation. She opened the door of the small enclosure, and Avery stepped forth. Mrs. Gram took cognizance of him with sad benevolence. " The little lamb," she said to Agatha. No further word was spoken. Their conductress preceded them along a dark, overheated corridor, over a floor covered with rubber matting. His robes, the smallest the church possessed, were yet far too large for him; he felt himself an ungainly figure. A right-angled turn brought them unexpectedly to
...the very brink of the baptistry. Through the scalloped archway, a considerable sector of the semicircular auditorium lay revealed; Avery instinctively stepped back before he remembered the concealment of the sombre shadows in which he stood. Hundreds ofeyes seemed focussed upon the baptistry. He took preoccupied note of a policeman standing near the glass doors of the side entranceway of the church. A second idler from the street duplicated the policeman's curious stare. But all these solemn eyeballs touched only the outer fringe of consciousness. Directly in front of and below him he beheld a baptism in progress. Since his turn came next, he watched the ceremony with acute concentration. A little more than waist-deep in the waters of the baptistry stood the robed figures of the pastor, Reverend Whitlock, and a woman. Doctor Whitlock faced the congregation, his confident profile strongly illumined by the light from the auditorium; his left hand held the woman...
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