"Frank Herbert - The White Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)


Several other surviving witnesses commented on a crumpled break in the Ford's
left front wing. The break had begun to rust.
Speaking from her hospital bed, one witness said: "The break was a jagged
thing and I was afraid someone would be cut if they brushed against it."

Two of those who recalled seeing the car come out of Lower Leeson Street knew
the driver casually, but only from his days in postal uniform. He was Francis
Bley, a retired postman working part-time as a watchman at a building site in
Dun Laoghaire. Bley left for work early every Wednesday, giving himself time
to run a few errands and then pick up his wife, Tessie. On that one day each
week, Tessie spent the morning doing "light secretarial" for a betting shop in
King Street. It was Tessie's habit to spend the rest of the day with her
widowed sister who lived in a remodeled gatehouse off the Dun Laoghaire bypass
"just a few minutes out of his way."

This was a Wednesday. May 20. Bley was on his way to pick up Tessie.

The Ford's left front door, although appearing undamaged by the accident that
had crumpled the wing, still required a twist of wire around the doorpost to
keep it closed. The door rattled every time the car hit a bump.

"I heard it rattling when it turned onto St. Stephen's Green South," one
witness said. "It's God's own mercy I wasn't at the Grafton corner when it
happened."

Bley turned right off St. Stephen's Green South, which put him on St.
Stephen's Green West, hugging the left lane as he headed for Grafton Street.
There were better routes for him to make his connection with Tessie, but this
was "his way."

"He liked to see all the people," Tessie said. "God rest him, that's what he
said he missed most when he quit the postal -- all the people."

Bley, slight and wrinkled, had that skin-stretched cadaverous look that is
common among certain aged Celts from the south of Ireland. He wore a soiled
brown hat almost the exact shade of his patched sweater, and he drove with the
patient detachment of someone who came this way often. And if the truth were
known, he rather liked being slowed by the heavy traffic.

It had been cold and wet through most of spring and, while it was still
cloudy, the cloud cover had thinned and there was a feeling that there might
be a break in the weather. Only a few of the pedestrians carried umbrellas.
The trees of St. Stephen's Green on Bley's right were in full leaf.

As the Ford inched along in the congested traffic, the man watching for it
from a fourth-floor window of the Irish Film Society Building nodded once in
satisfaction.

Right on time.