"Fritz Leiber - The Hound" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

missing your sleep. You have enough to do taking care of father all
day long. And I've told you a dozen times that you mustn't make
breakfast for me. You know the doctor says you need all the rest
you can get."
"Oh, I'm all right," she answered quickly, "but I was sure you'd
caught another cold. All night long I kept hearing itтАФa sniffling and
a snufflingтАФ"
Coffee spilled over into the saucer, as David set down the half-
raised cup. His mother's words had reawakened the elusive memory,
and now that it had come back he did not want to look it in the face.
His hand was shaking.
"It's late, I'll have to rush," he said.

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The Hound



She accompanied him to the door, so accustomed to his hastiness
that she saw in it nothing unusual. Her wan voice followed him
down the dark apartment stair: "I hope a rat hasn't died in the walls.
Did you notice the nasty smell?"
And then he was out of the door and had lost himself and his
memories in the early morning rush of the city. Tires singing on
asphalt. Cold engines coughing, then starting with a roar. Heels
clicking on the sidewalk, hurrying, trotting, converging on street car
intersections and elevated stations. Low heels, high heels. Heels of
stenographers bound downtown and of housewives hastening to
their stints of war work. Shouts of newsboys and glimpses of
headlines: "AIR BLITZ ONтАж BATTLESHIP SUNKтАж
BLACKOUT EXPECTED HEREтАж DRIVEN BACK."
But sitting in the stuffy solemnity of the street car, it was impossible
to keep from thinking of it any longer. Besides, the stale medicinal
smell of the yellow woodwork immediately brought back the
memory of that other smell. David Lashley clenched his hands in
his overcoat pockets and asked himself how it was possible for a
grown man to be so suddenly overwhelmed by a fear from
childhood. Yet in the same instant he knew with terrible certainty
that this was no childhood fear, this thing that had pursued him up
the years, growing ever more vast and menacing, until, like the
demon wolf Fenris at Ragnorak, its gaping jaws scraped heaven and
earth, seeking to open wider. This thing that had dogged his
footsteps, sometimes so far behind that he forgot its existence, but
now so close that he could almost feel its cold sick breath on his
neck. Werewolves? He had read up on such things at the library,

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The Hound