"deaddonttalk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blackmon Robert C)

the speed up to sixty miles an hour. The red taillights winked scarlet in the rainy night as
the coupe raced along the dark, wet pavement.

Lights still off, Benton followed, keeping enough distance between the cars so Weir
wouldn't notice his roadster. The two cars had the highway to themselves.

About five miles out-from East City, the coupe's stoplights flared again, and Benton's
foot sought the brake. His eyes were glowing as he stared through the wet windshield. He
stopped the roadster.

Weir's coupe came to a complete stop to the right of the pavement and some distance
ahead. Minutes passed, but the car did not move. Benton saw vague movement against the
glow of the headlights, through the rear glass. Then the coupe's right door opened and
something almost without shape tumbled out of the car. It rolled down into the shallow
ditch to the right of the highway. The door slammed immediately, and Weir was moving
again, racing on along the pavement.

Hard eyes glued on the spot where Weir had stopped, Benton got the roadster into
motion. The coupe's taillights were entirely out of sight as he reached the place where
Weir had halted. He stopped.

A puzzled frown pulled at his sandy brows, as he left the roadster and went down
into the ditch.

A small flashlight in his left hand spread a rough circle of light on the rain-soaked
earth, and he found the thing which had tumbled from Weir's coupe. Cold moisture that
wasn't all rain beaded his forehead as he found it.

It was the small, thin man who had climbed into Weir's coupe, back in East City, hardly
fifteen minutes ago!


The little man was Iying on his back in about an inch of muddy water on the bottom of the
ditch. His thin arms were bent awkwardly. Sharp and white, his face was upturned in the
flashlight glow. His eyes, small and staring fixedly, were wide open to the slanting rain.
Small, stained teeth showed in his sagging mouth.

The wooden handle of a cheap butcher knife jutted up straight from the left center of
his narrow chest, and Benton didn't have to look twice to know that the little man was dead.
The blade of the knife had undoubtedly split his heart. There was surprisingly little blood.

Benton swore softly and squatted beside the body.

The wet gray coat was open, the inside breast pocket all but pulled inside out, as if
someone had hurriedly jerked something from the pocket. There was nothing at all in the
pocket, nor in any of the other pockets of the little man's gray suit.

Benton straightened. He was swearing softly.

He had never seen the little man before. The man had been dead but a very few minutes,