"Destroyer - 025 - Sweet Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

A man could go crazy from all that. And Wooley tried to explain to his wife, but she just wouldn't or couldn't understand, and then she was no longer Mrs. William Westhead Wooley. And Wooley took a shabby apartment in town where the prying eyes of his university fellows could not spy on his experiments with brainwaves.

And tonight, all the work had paid off, all the dreams were coming true.

Tonight, St. Louis, Missouri. Tomorrow, the world.

And the world could wait until tomorrow. The wait would just drive the price up.

Wooley and Leen Forth sat in the darkness until long after they no longer heard any sounds from the cafeteria. Then they sneaked quietly down the back stairs, walked across campus to Wooley's car, and got in for the drive to his St. Louis apartment.

When he opened his apartment door with a key, the first thing Wooley noticed was that the piles of dirt and laundry seemed to have grown since the last time he looked. He wished Janet Hawley hadn't just disappeared from his life. Not that she cleaned up his apartment-she would never have stooped so low-but she needled and nagged him into keeping it in some semblance of order.

He wondered why she never answered her telephone anymore.

Then Wooley noticed something else in the room. It was an odor, a rich pungent smell of tobacco smoke, the smell of a fine handmade cigar.

He stepped back toward the door, putting his arm around Leen Forth. But a lamp came on behind him and a soft gentle voice said: "It's good to see you, Doctor Wooley."

Wooley turned. Sitting on the couch was a dignified looking man with silver hair and piercing black eyes, wearing a dark pin-striped suit. Dr. Wooley had been frightened when he had first realized someone was in the apartment but when he saw the man, the gentility and nobility of his fine-featured face, the smooth, warm smile he flashed toward Wooley and his daughter, Wooley's uneasiness vanished. He didn't know his visitor but obviously such a man meant no harm to Wooley or Leen Forth.

The man rose.

"I am pleased to meet you, Professor. I am Salvatore Massello."


"Remo, wake up." Smith's voice was like ice in the darkened hotel room.

He heard a snicker from Chiun, sleeping on his grass mat in the center of the floor. Then Remo's voice:

"You came up the steps, instead of using the elevator. Probably so you wouldn't make any noise. You tripped on the second step from the top of the landing. Just before you opened the door to this floor you coughed. You jingled in your pocket looking for the room key before you found out the door was open. And now you tell me, wake up. I ask you. How's somebody supposed to sleep if you keep making all this racket?"

"Do not abuse the emperor," Chiun told Remo in the dark. "He was very quiet."

"Yeah? Then why are you awake?"

"I heard your breathing change," Chiun said. "I thought perhaps you had been attacked by a flying hamburger. I was going to come to your rescue."

"Oh, blow it out your ears, Little Father," Remo said. "Well, what is it, Smitty?"

"Do you mind if I turn on a light? I don't like to talk to people I can't see."

"Learn to see in the dark," Remo said. "Oh, go ahead, turn on the light. My night's sleep is shot anyway."

When Smith turned on the light, Remo sat up on the couch and turned toward him. Like a slow puff of steam, Chiun rose from his sleeping mat until he was in a lotus position looking at Smith.

"Well, what is it?" Remo said.

"I thought you might want to look at a house," Smith said.

"At this hour? What real estate agent is showing houses at this hour?" Remo asked.