"Edmond Hamilton - Doomstar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

She put her hand in his and stood up, and she must have seen the change in his expression because
she smiled, rather tremulously. And that was when Tighe came up and touched Kettrick's shoulder, and
said, "Johnny, there's a couple of men who want to see you."
He pointed to the silk-draped entrance where two men stood with the snow melting on the
shoulders of their in-sulated suits, unfestive, unsmiling, waiting.
Kettrick looked at them. He patted Sandra's hand again and said, "I'll only be a minute." She sat
down slowly and watched him as he walked away with Tighe.
The two men greeted him quietly, their faces remotely pleasant and very businesslike. They might
have been a su-perior class of salesman. They were not. Kettrick looked stonily at the identification they
showed himтАФhe didn't need any, but it was regulationтАФand he said, "What the hell more do you want
from me?"
One of the men said, "I don't know, Mr. Kettrick. But we have orders to bring you in."
They waited. Kettrick stood still. He stood easily, his shoulders dropped slightly forward, his dark
eyes regarding the two men with a kind of bright speculation. Tighe, who towered over him by several
inches and outweighed him by some fifty pounds, said pleadingly, "Please, Johnny, do your arguing
outside? Please?"
Kettrick shrugged. "What's the use of arguing?" He glanced back to where Sandra was still watching
him anx-iously, and he waved to her. He gave Tighe a fifty credit note and said, "See that she gets home
all right." He re-claimed his evening cloak, snicked the thermostat to on, pulled the hood over his head
and walked out between the two quiet men, and that was the last time Sandra ever saw him.
The cold air hit his face with a clean ringing slap that was very pleasant after the overwarm,
overscented air of the club. Snow was still falling, melting on the heated roadways. There was a dark
unobtrusive car standing at the curb. The driver lounged behind the steering lever with the timeless
patience of a man who had waited just so outside a million doors on a million days and nights. Kettrick
and his escort got in and the car glided off, its turbine humming softly.
For a time it kept to the streets, running between the banked-up lights of the buildings that reared
enormously into the sky, and Kettrick expected to be taken to the gov-ernment building that had become
familiar to him through far too many previous visits. He noticed that the rear-mounted fisheye was
operative, and that the men were watch-ing the traffic behind them on the small monitor screen. He
wondered who they thought would be following them, or him, but he did not bother to ask. He knew
from experience that these lads did not answer questions.
They passed through the gaudy brilliance of Times Square, and then one of the men said something
to the driver and the car turned aside into the narrower crosstown streets and began a series of
well-calculated maneuvers, which a skillful tail might follow but only at the price of betraying himself.
And now Kettrick began to be really curious.
 The monitor showed only the normal random traffic be-hind them. One of the men said, "Okay,
Harry," and the driver grunted and sent the car spinning down the nearest high-speed road to Long
Island.
They were not going to the government building, that much was sure. Kettrick tightened his jaw and
waited.
The eventual road was long and lonely, running dark be-tween the walled gardens of estates. The
car slowed and turned into a barred gateway, which presently opened to admit them into a place of
snowy lawns and skeletal shrub-bery, with a clean-scraped driveway curving up to a large house with
lights shining from its windows.
Kettrick went inside with his escort.
In a broad and beautiful hall, a butler took his cloak and bade him wait. The two men remained with
him, impassive, until the butler returned. Then they accompanied him to a doorway and saw him through
it, and closed it firmly be-hind him.
Kettrick looked around the room. It was a library, solid, masculine, and comfortable. Heavy
curtains masked the win-dows. An archaic but pleasant wood fire blazed on the hearth. Kettrick was