"Now You See It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Matheson Richard)

14 Richard Mathenm

place/ although in retrospect, I realize that it probably was
no accident

After all. she would have been an obviously sentient wit-
ness to the mania which occurred.

One thing about residing in a useless body in the sole com-
pany of one's brain: it gives one time to appraise said brain,
appreciate its true capacities, and, eventually, train it to per-
form. In this way I was able to educate my brain to remem-
ber everything I saw around me, thus enabling me to write
down this event in full detail.

This is fortunate because the events I will describe took
place fourteen years ago. I will explain, in due course, why I
had to wait so long to disclose them-

But first, let me sketch in me environment for the play,
orЧmost appropriatelyЧIhe setting for the magic show.
For magic is me dark thread which binds together me tapes-
try of mis crazed and homicidal episode, this lethal interval
of time.

This period of total lunacy.

This happened in the home where my son had lived for
thirty-seven of his fifty-two years. My wife Lenore gave
birth to him in 1928, dying ten years later giving birth to our
second (stillborn) son.

As indicated, Maximilian had been (since my "accident"
made it impossible for me to perform) The Great Delacorte.
He had been my assistant since he was seventeen, and knew
my act as weU as I did, performing on his own as well as
continuing to help me, reaching full theatrical bloom when
he was thirty-seven and assumed my stage name.

Living in this house were two other people, not counting
the houseman and cleaning woman, who were also not pre-

Now You See It- 15

sent on that day. Coincidence? My aged, wrinkled ass it
was.

The first of these two people was Max's wife Cassandra,
forty-one, a woman of uncommon beauty, intelligence, and