"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

for them.

His wife was ill and bedridden, though the illness was not specified, and his
eldest daughter; Barbara, had begun to prostitute herself for food. She was
thirteen. He had been out, searching unsuccessfully for work, having been
given
notice of eviction if he could not come up with the delinquent rent by
morning,
and he had returned to find his wife and children arguing. Irene wanted to do
her part to help and join her sister on the streets. Irene was nine.

What occurred afterward was something we would never know, for he began to
relate what happened, then broke off, ending with one more apology, this time
to
God, and then he signed his name, James Whitby, in large and bold,
flourishing
script, as if with his final signature, he had tried to impart some
importance
and dignity to his name.

His actions were not, of course, those of a sane man. The poor devil's mind
had
snapped. It was possible he was unstable to begin with, but there was also
the
haunting possibility that he had been as sane as any one of us and that, in
his
last extremity, his reason simply had fled. The most curious thing was that
he
had told us virtually nothing of himself. He was, and would remain, a cipher

He had signed his name, in big, bold letters, and yet he had said nothing
about
who and what he was. He had made no personal statement. He had died as he had
lived, merely another average, insignificant little man whom one would never
notice on the street, a man who, one might infer, held no pretensions, but
cared
about his family and did whatever he was able to get by. And when all his
best
efforts came to nought, and he saw his family suffering in result, his wife
sick, one daughter degraded and the baby of the family wanting to degrade
herself as well to make up for Daddy's shortcomings ... Well, he apparently
broke down and decided death was preferable for all of them, a release from a
life that was no longer worm living.

I remember Royceton dropped the note down on the bed, not intentionally, he
had
simply let go of it, and it fluttered onto the bloody chest of little Irene.
Royceton shut his eyes and turned away, then murmured, "You know, I can
almost
understand the poor sod."