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

"Has he left you? Is that it?" Fowler demanded.

She gave him a look of hatred. But she nodded. "It's your fault and you've got to help me. I need money. IЧ"

"All right, all right! You're hysterical, but I'll help you. Where are you? I'll pick you up and we'll have a drink and talk things over. You're better off than you know, baby. He never was the man for you. You haven't got a thing to worry about. I'll be there in half an hour and we can pick up where we left off three years ago."

Part of what he implied was true enough, he reflected as he switched off the television screen. Curiously, he still meant to marry her. The changed face with its querulous lines and corded throat repelled him, but you don't argue with an obsession. Hep had worked three years toward this moment, and he still meant to marry Veronica Barnaby as he had originally meant to marry Veronica Wood. AfterwardЧwell, things might be different.

One thing frightened him. She was not quite as stupid as he .had gambled on that day years ago when he had been forced to call on her for help with Norman. She had seen too much, deduced too muchЧremembered much too much. She might be dangerous. He would have to find out just what she thought she knew about him and Norman.

It might be necessary to silence her, in one way or another.

Norman said with painful distinctness: "Must tell you . . . mustЧ''

"No, Norman." Fowler spoke hastily. "We have a job to do. There isn't time now to discussЧ"

"Can't work," Norman said. "No . . . must tell you-Ч" He paused, lifted a shaking hand to his eyes, grimacing against his own palm with a look of terrible effort and entreaty. The strength that was mysteriously returning to him at intervals now had made him almost a human being again. The blankness of His face flooded sometimes with almost recognizable individuality.

"Not yet, Norman!" Fowler heard the alarm in his own voice. "I need you. Later we'll work out whatever it is you're trying to say. Not now. I ... look, we've got to reverse that lighting system we made for Veronica. I want a set of lights that will flatter her. I need it in a hurry, Norman. You'll have to get to work on it right away."

Norman looked at him with hollow eyes. Fowler didn't like it. He would not meet the look. He focused on Norman's forehead as he repeated his instructions in a patient voice.

Behind that colorless forehead the being that was Norman must be hammering against its prison walls of bone, striving hard to escape. Fowler shook off the fanciful idea in distaste, repeated his orders once more and left the house in some haste. Veronica would be waiting.

But the look in Norman's eyes haunted him all the way into the city. Dark, hollow, desperate. The prisoner in the skull, shut into a claustrophobic cell out of which no sound could carry. He was getting dangerously strong, that prisoner. It would be a mercy in the long run if some task were set to exhaust him, throw him back into that catatonic state in which he no longer knew he was in prison.

Veronica was not there. He waited for an hour in the bar. Then he called her apartment, and got no answer. He tried his own house, and no one seemed to be there either. With unreasonably mounting uneasiness, he went home at last.

She met him at the door.

"Veronica! I waited for an hour! What's the idea?"

She only smiled at him. There was an almost frightening triumph in the smile, but she did not speak a word.

Fowler pushed past her, fighting his own sinking sensation of alarm. He called for Norman almost automatically, as if his unconscious mind recognized before the conscious knew just what the worst danger might be. For Veronica might be stupid

but he had perhaps forgotten how cunning the stupid sometimes are. Veronica could put two and two together very well. She could reason from cause to effect quite efficiently, when her own welfare was at stake. ~"

She had reasoned extremely well today.

Norman lay on the bed in his windowless room, his face as blank as paper. Some effort of the mind and will had exhausted him out of all semblance to a rational being. Some new, some overwhelming task, set him byЧVeronica? Not by Fowler. The job he had been working on an hour ago was no such killing job as this.

But would Norman obey anyone except Fowler? He had defied Veronica on that other occasion when she tried to give him orders. He had almost escaped before Fowler's commanding voice ordered him back. Wait, thoughЧshe had coaxed him. Fowler remembered now. She could not command, but she had coaxed the blank creature into obedience. So there was a way. And she knew it.

But what had the task been?

With long strides Fowler went back into the drop-shaped living room. Veronica stood in the doorway where he had left her. She was waiting.

"What did you do?" he demanded.