"Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore - Prisoner In The Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

down his tools and faced Fowler over the table with a look that bordered on animationтАФfor Norman.

"SickтАФ" he said painfully. "I . " . know . . . work!" It was an anathema. He made a defiant gesture and pushed the tools

away.

Fowler, with a sinking sensation, frowned at the rebellious

nonentity.

"All right, Norman," he said soothingly. "All right. You can rest when you finish this job. You must finish it first,
though. You must finish this job, Norman. Do you understand that? You must finishтАФ"

It was sheer accident, of courseтАФor almost accidentтАФthat the job turned out to be much more complicated than
Fowler had expected. Norman, obedient to the slow, repeated commands, worked very late and very hard.

The end of the job found him so completely exhausted he couldn't speak or move for three days.

As a matter of fact it was the Hed-D-Acher that turned out to be an important milestone in Fowler's progress. He
couldn't

recognize it at the time, but when he looked back, years later, he saw the occasion of his first serious mistake. His first,
that is, unless you count the moment when he lifted Norman across his threshold at the very start of the thing.

Fowler had to go to Washington to defend himself in some question of patent infringement. A large firm had found out
about the Hed-D-Acher and jumped in on the grounds of similar wiringтАФat least that was Fowler's impression. He was
no technician. The main point was that the Hed-D-Achef couldn't be patented in its present form, and Fowler's rivals
were trying to squeeze through a similarтАФand stolenтАФHed-D-Acher of their own.

Fowler phoned the Korys Agency. Long distance television was not on the market yet and he was not able to see
Veronica's face, but he knew what expression must be visible on it when he told her what he wanted.

"But I'm going out on a job, John. I can't just drop everything and rush out to your house."

"Listen, Veronica, there may be a hundred thousand bucks in it. I ... there's no one else I can trust." He didn't add his
chief reason for trusting herтАФthe fact that she wasn't over-bright.

In the end, she went. Dramatic situations appealed to her, and he dropped dark hints of corporation espionage and
bloody doings on Capitol Hill. He told her where to find the key and she hung up, leaving Fowler to gnaw his nails
intermittently and try to limit himself to one whiskey-soda every half hour. He was paged, it seemed to him, some years
later. "Hello, Veronica?"

"Right. I'm at the house. The key was where you said. Now what?"

Fowler had had time to work out a plan. He put pencil and note pad on the jutting shelf before him and frowned
slightly. This might be a risk, butтАФ

But he intended to marry Veronica, so it was no great risk. And she wasn't smart enough to figure out the real answers.
He told her about the windowless room. "That's my house-boy'sтАФNorman. He's slightly half-witted, but a good boy
on mechanical stuff. Only he's a little deaf, and you've got to tell him a thing three times before he understands it."