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

She forced him back into the chair. тАЬYou're in no condition to leave here, Will Hawkes. Ugh! Your shoes
are filthy. Let me help youтАж there, isn't that better? Whatever you've been doing to yourself, you should be
ashamed. You're going straight to bed while I clean some of this up!тАЭ
His head had sunk back on the table, and everything reached him through a thick fog. It wasn't right - girls
didn't act that way to strange men who looked as if they'd come from a Bowery fight. Girls didn't take a
man's clothes off. Girls didn'tтАж
He let her half carry him into the bedroom, and tried to protest as she put him between clean sheets. He
stared at the view of his lavender shorts against the fresh whiteness, while things seemed far away. He'd
played with a girl named Ellen, once when he was eleven and she was nine. She'd had bright copper hair, and
her name had been - what had it been? Not Iba├▒ez. Bennett, that was it. Ellen Bennett.
He must have said it aloud. She chuckled. тАЬOf course, Will. Though I never thought you'd be the same
Will Hawkes. I knew it when I saw that scar on your shoulder, where you cut yourself sliding down our
cellar door. Go to sleep.тАЭ
Sliding down, sliding down into clouds of sleep. Sleep! She'd drugged him! Something in the coffee!


He jerked up, reaching for her, but she ducked aside, drawing on the tops to a pair of frilly pajamas.
тАЬEllen, you -тАЭ
тАЬShh!тАЭ She pulled a robe over the pajamas and lay down, outside the blankets. тАЬShh, Will. You have to
sleep. You're so tired, so sleepyтАжтАЭ
Her voice was soothing, and the fingers along the base of his neck was relaxing. He reached out a last
inquiring finger of doubt for the feeling of danger, and couldn't find it. This was as wrong as the other things
had been wrong - but his mind let go, and he was suddenly asleep.
He awoke slowly, with a thick feeling in his mouth. Drugged! And the sense of danger had failed him
again! He swung over sharply, reaching for her, buts he was gone.
His clothes lay beside him, neatly pressed, and he grabbed for them. There was a pair of socks, too large,
but better than none. His muscles felt wrong as he began dressing, but the feeling wore away. The clock said
that less two hours had passed. If sheтАЩd put a drug in the coffee, it must have been one to which he was less
sensitive than the average. SheтАЩd probably never suspected that he would waken.
A trace of fear struck through him, but it was weaker than before, and it seemed normal enough, under the
circumstances. He fumbled over the shoelaces, and then grabbed up his coat.
SheтАЩd bring them back! Maybe they'd used her as a spy!
 But he couldn't understand why she'd bothered to press his clothes. And the apartment still puzzled him.
Even if her story was true, it simply wasn't the sort of a place where a girl like her would live. Nor was it
fixed as she might have arranged a place, even allowing for what he might have done to it in seven months.
He reached automatically for the lock in the dim hall, and realized his hands knew the door, whatever else
was true. Then he went out and down the stairs. He heard a babble of kids' voices, part in English and part in
a sort of Spanish. That meant that things were normal, to the casual observer along the street. But he knew it
was poor evidence that things really were as they should be. He stood in the comparative darkness, of the
hall, staring out. Nothing was wrong, so far as he could see. He had to risk it.
Hawkes shoved past the women on the steps, and headed down West End, trying not to seem in a hurry.
His eyes turned up to the roof of the garage, but he could see nothing there; he'd half-expected that the slim
young man would be parked up on the roof, waiting.


Then the fear began, mounting slowly. He jerked around quickly, scanning the street. For a second, he
thought he saw the slim figure, but it was only a back turned to him, and it disappeared into a barber-shop.
Probably someone else.
The fear mounted a little, and he found his steps quickening. He cut around the corner, where men were
crowded into a little restaurant. He was heading into a dead-end street, but there was an alley leading from it.