"Lester Del Rey - Pursuit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

 II



The room was smelly and cheap, with dirty walls and no carpet on the floor, but it was a relief after the
hours of tramping and riding about the city. Hawkes sat on the rickety chair, letting the wetness dry out of
his clothes. He looked at the bed, trying to convince himself he could strip and warm up there while his
clothes dried. But something in his head warned him that he couldn't - he'd have to be ready to run again.
The same urge had made him demand a room on the ground floor, where he could escape through the
window if they found him. They could never find him here - but they would! Sooner or later, whatever was
after him would come!
It had seemed simple enough, before. There had been three friends he could trust. Seven months, he had
felt, couldn't have killed their faith in him, no matter what he'd done. And perhaps he'd been right, though
there'd been no chance to test it.
He'd almost been caught at the first place. The two men outside had seemed to be no more than a couple
of friends awaiting for a bus. Only the approach of another man who resembled Hawkes had tipped him off,
by the quick interest they had shown.
The other places had also been posted - and beyond the third, he'd seen the gray sedan with the running
boards, parked back in the shadows, waiting.
There had been less than ten dollars in his wallet, and most of that had gone for cab fares. He'd barely had
enough left for this dingy room, the later edition of the newspaper, and the coffee and donuts that lay beside
him, half-consumed.
He glanced toward the door, listening with quick fear as steps sounded on the stairs. Then he drew his
breath in again, and reached for the newspaper. But it told him as little as the first one had.
This one mentioned the two mysterious explosions of тАЬball lightningтАЭ in a feature on the first page, but
only as curiosities. They even gave his address and listed the apartment as being in his name, though
apparently not currently occupied. But no other reference was made to him, or to the chase.
He shook his head at that. He couldn't see a newspaper-man refusing to make a story of it, if there was
any other news about him to which they could tie the burning of his apartment. Apparently it was not the
police who were after him, and he hadn't been guilty of anything so ordinary as murder.


Outside the window, a sudden scream sounded, and he jerked from the chair, reaching the door before he
realized it was only a cat on the prowl. He shuddered, his old hatred of cats coming to the surface. For a
minute, he thought of shutting the window. But he couldn't cut off his chance to retreat through the
garbage-littered backyard.
He returned to his search, beginning an inventory of the few belongings that had been in his pocket. There
was a notebook, and he scanned it rapidly. A few pages were missing, and most were blank. There was only
a shopping list. That puzzled him for a minute - he couldn't believe he'd taken to using lipstick as well as
cigarettes, though both were listed in his handwriting. The notebook contained nothing else.
 He stuffed it back into his pockets, along with his keyring. There were more keys than he'd expected,
some of which were strange to him, but none held any mark that would identify them. He put a few pennies
into another pocket - his entire wealth, now, in a world where no more money would be available to him. He
grimaced, dropping a comb into the same pocket.
Then there was only his wallet left. His identification card was there, unchanged. Behind it, where his
wife's picture had always been, there was only a folded clipping. He drew it out, hoping for a clew. It was
only an announcement of people killed in an airplane crash - and among those found dead was Mrs. Wilbur
Hawkes, of New York. It seemed that Irma had never reached Reno for the divorce.
He tried to feel some sorrow at that, but time must have healed whatever hurt there had been, even though
he couldn't remember. She had hated him ever since she'd found that he really wasn't willing to please his