"Henry Kuttner - Don't Look Now" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"It's getting late," he said. "Not many people left. We'll wait."

"Wait for what?"

The brown man looked toward the back booth and looked away again quickly.

"I have something to show you. I don't want anyone else to see."

Lyman surveyed the narrow, smoky room. As he looked the last customer beside themselves at the bar began groping
in his

pocket, tossed some change on the mahogany, and went out slowly.

They sat in silence. The bartender eyed them with stolid disinterest. Presently a couple in the front booth got up and
departed, quarreling in-undertones.

"Is there anyone left?" the brown man asked in a voice that did not carry down the bar to the man in the apron.

"OnlyтАФ" Lyman did not finish, but he nodded gently toward the back of the room. "He isn't looking. Let's get this
over with. What do you want to show me?"
The brown man took off his wrist watch and pried up the metal case. Two small, glossy photograph prints slid out. The
brown man separated them with a finger.

"I just want to make sure of something," he said. "FirstтАФ why did you pick me out? Quite a while ago, you said you'd
been trailing me all day, making sure. I haven't forgotten that. And you knew I was a reporter. Suppose you tell me the
truth, now?"

Squirming on his stool, Lyman scowled. "It was the way you looked at things," he murmured. "On the subway this
morningтАФI'd never seen you before in my life, but I kept noticing the way you looked at thingsтАФthe wrong things,
things that weren't there, the way a cat doesтАФand then you'd always look awayтАФI got the idea you could see the
Martians too."

"Go on," the brown man said quietly.

"I followed you. All day. I kept hoping you'd turn out to beтАФsomebody I could talk to. Because if I could know that I
wasn't the only one who could see them, then I'd know there was still some hope left. It's been worse than solitary
confinement. I've been able to see them for three years now. Three years. And I've managed to keep my power a secret
even from them. And, somehow, I've managed to keep from killing myself, too."

"Three years?" the brown man said. He shivered.

"There was always a little hope. I knew nobody would believeтАФ not without proof. And how can you get proof? It
was only that IтАФI kept telling myself that maybe you could see them too, and if you could, maybe there were
othersтАФlots of othersтАФenough so we might get together and work out some way of proving to the worldтАФ"

The brown man's fingers were moving. In silence he pushed a photograph across the mahogany. Lyman picked it up
unsteadily.

"Moonlight?" he asked after a moment. It was a landscape under a deep, dark sky with white clouds in it. Trees stood
white