"A. E. Merritt - Creep, Shadow!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

mason would put the string in a box and build the box in the wall. In forty days the editor would be dead
and his soul be sitting in the box beside the string.

One of the afternoon men glumly said that forty days would be too long to wait for the ones he had in
mind. But the other asked, with disarming naivete, whether I believed such a thing possible. I answered
that if a man were strongly enough convinced he would die on a certain day, he would die on that day.
Not because his shadow had been measured and the string buried, but because he believed that this was
going to kill him. It was purely a matter of suggestion--of auto-hypnosis. Like the praying to death
practiced by the kahunas, the warlocks of the South Seas, of the results of which there was no doubt
whatever. Always providing, of course, that the victim knew the kahuna was praying his death--and the
exact time his death was to occur.

I ought to have known better. The morning papers carried only a few lines to the effect that I had talked
to the police and had been unable to throw any light on the Ralston suicide. But the early editions of the
naive reporter's paper featured a special article.

WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR ENEMIES?

GET A RIFF GAL'S MAGIC MIRROR--OR BRING IN A BULGARIAN MASON.

Dr. Alan Caranac, Noted Explorer, Tells How to Separate Yourself Safely from Those You Don't Want
Around--But the Catch Is That First You Have to Make 'Em Believe You Can Do It.

It was a good story, even if it did make me swear in spots. I read it over again and laughed. After all, I'd
brought it on myself. The 'phone rang, and Bill was on the line. He asked abruptly:

"What put it in your head to talk to that reporter about shadows?"

He sounded jumpy. I said, surprised:

"Nothing. Why shouldn't I have talked to him about shadows?"

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he asked:

"Nothing happened to direct your mind to that subject? Nobody suggested it?"

"You're getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice puts it. But no, Bill, I brought the matter up all by
myself. And no shadow fell upon me whispering in my ear--"

He interrupted, harshly: "Don't talk like that!"

And now I was truly surprised, for there was panic in Bill's voice, and that wasn't like him at all.

"There really wasn't any reason. It just happened," I repeated. "What's it all about, Bill?"

"Never mind now." I wondered even more at the relief in his voice. He swiftly changed the subject:
"Dick's funeral is tomorrow. I'll see you there."

Now the one thing I won't be coerced or persuaded into doing is to go to the funeral of a friend. Unless
there are interesting and unfamiliar rites connected with it, it's senseless. There lies a piece of cold meat