Malone has been working with Howard to uncover evidence of Robert Suydam’s mental instability at the request of Suydam’s family, who want to take control of Suydam’s fortune. Howard on his way to deliver the missing page to Ma Att. This event leads Tommy to join Suydam in his mission of waking the Sleeping King. Howard shot and killed his father while searching for the page from Ma Att’s book. Tommy returns to Harlem the next day and learns that Mr. Suydam demonstrates his power by moving the mansion through space and time. Tommy takes issue with this characterization, but Suydam begins speaking of a Sleeping King whom Suydam will raise to destroy mankind. Suydam explains that it is a trial run for the party he will hold the following evening, where his guests will be people of color who live in ghettos they are too ignorant to escape.

Three days later, Tommy arrives at Robert Suydam’s mansion and finds it empty. As the detectives leave, Malone hints that he knows Tommy stole a page from Ma Att’s book to keep her from using its magic powers. Tommy pleads ignorance with the detectives. Howard, question Tommy about a wealthy white man named Robert Suydam, who has offered Tommy an unusually large sum of money to play his guitar at an upcoming party. A month later, two police officers, Detective Malone and the private investigator Mr. Part 1 opens as Tommy delivers a mysterious yellow book to a woman in Queens named Ma Att.

The story’s narration is in the close third person, with Part 1 from Tommy’s perspective and Part 2 from the perspective of Detective Malone. Set in Harlem in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance, the novella follows 20-year-old Charles Thomas “Tommy” Tester, a street hustler who lives in an apartment with his ailing father.

The ballad of black tom