"Charles L. Harness-Probable Cause" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

Probable Cause
by Charles L. Harness
This story copyright 1968 by Charles L. Harness.Reprinted by permission of Linn Prentiss.This copy
was created for Jean Hardy's personal use.All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the
copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

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The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause...
Nor shall any person be compelled to be a witness against himself...
-- Constitution of the United States, excerpts, Fourth and Fifth Amendments
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Benjamin Edmonds turned the film advance knob on the self-developing camera in slow rhythmic
motions of hand and wrist. When the mechanism locked, he placed the camera on its side next to the
bronze casting on the wall table. He flipped off the ceiling light and turned on the faint red darkroom lamp
over the developing trays. He sat for a moment, studying the casting and waiting for his eyes to adjust to
the near darkness.
The replica was a plain, almost homely thing: a hand clasping a piece of broomstick. Even after a
century and a quarter it still radiated the immense strength and suprahuman compassion of its greater
model, and it would surely help to waken the distant sleeping shadows. Edmonds laid his own big hand
over it softly; the metal seemed oddly warm.
It was time to begin.
He turned off the red light and let the blackness flow over him.
The images began almost immediately. At first they flickered vaguely, seemingly trapped within the
plane of his eyelids. Then they gathered clarity and stereoscopic dimension, and moved out, and away.
They were real, and he was there, in the crowded theater, looking up at the flag-draped presidential box,
occupied by the three smaller figures and the tall bearded man in the rocking chair. And now, from
behind, a fifth. The arm surely rising. The deadly glint of metal. The shot. The man leaping out of the box
to the stage below. And pandemonium. Fluttering scenes. They were carrying the tall man across the
street in the wavering paschal moonlight. And finally, in that far time, Edmonds permitted the strange
hours to pass, until the right moment came, and the right image came.
It was the critical instant. This last scene, this static vision in time, must now be captured on the
emulsion waiting inside the camera. As always, the mental process of transfer was sharp, burning. And
then it was done.
 He stood up and turned on the ceiling light again. He was breathing heavily. He felt cold, but his face