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

having you there that upset him. Strangers throw him off his balance. He's fine now. Let's forget about Norman. We were talking about getting married, remember?"

"You were. Not me. No, Johnny, I'm afraid it wouldn't work." She looked at him in the soft light, her face clouded with doubt andЧwas it suspicion? With a woman of Veronica's mentality, you never knew just where you stood. Fowler could reason her out of every objection she offered to him, but because reason meant so little to her, the solid substratum of her convictions remained unchanged.

"You'll marry me," he said, his voice confident. "No." She gave him an uneasy look and then drew a deep breath and said: "You may as well know this now, JohnnyЧI've just about decided to marry somebody else."

"Who?" He wanted to shout the question, but he forced himself to be calm.

"No one you know. Ray Barnaby. I ... I've pretty well made up my mind about it, John."

"I don't know the man," Fowler told her evenly, "but I'll make it mjwbusiness to find out all I can." "Now John, let's not quarrel. IЧ"

"You're going to marry me or nobody, Veronica." Fowler was astonished at the sudden violence of his own reaction. "Do you understand that?"

"Don't be silly, John. You don't own me." "I'm not being silly! I'm just telling you." "John, I'll do exactly as I please. Now, let's not quarrel about it."

Until now, until this moment of icy rage, he had never quite realized what an obsession Veronica had become. Fowler had got out of the habit of being thwarted. His absolute power over one individual and one unchanging situation was giving him a taste for tyranny. He sat looking at Veronica in the pink dimness of the booth, grinding his teeth together in an effort not to shout at her.

"If you go through with this, Veronica, I'll make it my business to see you regret it as long as you live," he told her in a harsh, low voice.

She pushed her half-emptied glass aside with sudden violence that matched his. "Don't get me started, John Fowler!" she said angrily. "I've got a temper, too! I've always known there was something I didn't like about you." "There'll be a lot more you don't like if youЧ" "That's enough, John!" She got up abruptly, clutching at her

slipping handbag. Even in this soft light he could see the sudden hardening of her face, the lines of anger pinching downward along her nose and mouth. A perverse triumph filled him because at this moment'she was ugly in her rage, but it did not swerve his determination.

"You're going to marry me," he told her harshly. "Sit down. You're going to marry me if I have toЧ" He paused.

"To what?" Her voice was goading. He shook his head. He couldn't finish the threat aloud.

Norman will help me, he was thinking in cold triumph. Norman will find a way.

He smiled thinly after her as she stalked in a fury out of the bar.

For a week Fowler heard no more from her. He made inquiries about the man Barnaby and was not surprised to learn that Veronica's intendedЧif she had really been serious about the fellow, after allЧwas a young broker of adequate income and average stupidity. A nonentity. Fowler told himself savagely that they were two of a kind and no doubt deserved-each other. But his obsession still ruled him, and he was determined that no one but himself should marry Veronica.

Short of hypnosis, there seemed no immediate way to change her mind. But perhaps he could change Barnaby's. He believed he could, given enough time. Norman was at work on a rather ingenious little device involving the use of a trick lighting system. Fowler had been impressed, on consideration, by thз effect of a rosy light in the bar on Veronica's appearance.

Another week passed, with no news about Veronica. Fowler told himself he could afford to remain aloof. He had the means to control her very nearly within his grasp. He would watch her, and wait his time in patience.

He was very busy, too, with other things. Two more devices were ready for patentingЧthe Magic Latch keyed to fingerprint patterns, and the Haircut Helmet that could be set for any sort of hair trimming and would probably wreak havoc among barbers. But litigation on the Hed-D-Acher was threatening to be expensive, and Fowler had learned already to live beyond his means. Far beyond. It seemed ridiculous to spend only what he took in each day, when such fortunes in royalties were just around the corner.

Twice he had to take Norman off the lighting device to perform small tasks in other directions. And Norman was in himself a problem.

The work exhausted him. It had to exhaust him. That was

necessary. An unpleasant necessity, of course, but there it was. Sometimes the exhaustion in Norman's eyes made one uncomfortable. Certainly Norman suffered. But because he was seldom able to show it plainly, Fowler could tell himself that perhaps he imagined the worst part of it. Casuistry, used to good purpose, helped him to ignore what he preferred not to see.

By the end of the second week", Fowler decided not to wait on Veronica any longer. He bought a dazzling solitaire diamond whose cost faintly alarmed even himself, and a wedding band that was a full circle of emerald-cut diamonds to complement it. With ten thousand dollars worth of jewelry in his pocket, he went into the city to pay her a call.

Barnaby answered the door.