"Lewis Padgett - Compliments of the Author" - читать интересную книгу автора (Padgett Lewis)

standing in the friendly darkness, he found the whiskey bottle in his coat and drank deeply. It helped.
"But I couldn'tтАФ" he said aloud, and broke off, with a quick glance around. Nothing stirred.
Except the cat. The cat came out of the shadows and looked at Tracy with luminous green eyes.
"There's still revenge," it said, waving its tail. "And I'm a particularly nasty sort of familiar. I was fond of Baldy.
Run along, Sam Tracy. You won't get into any trouble with the police. But you'll get into trouble with meтАФand my
friends. It'll be harder, since you've got the book, but I'll manage." It yawned, flicking a pink tongue at Tracy.
The reporter thought of posthypnosis, and slowly drew his automatic. The cat went away, with the magic
peculiar to cats. Tracy nodded and descended the steps, getting into his car and starting the motor with a nervous
jerk.
It was awkward turning the car around on the narrow, winding road, but he managed it without too much
difficulty. Going down the canyon in second gear, Tracy kept his eyes on the black center line and thought hard.
Murder. First-degree, at that. But there was no evidence.
He chewed his lip. He was getting shaky, firing at shadows. Unfortunate that Gwinn happened to be behind that
particular shadow. Still . . .
Still, it couldn't be helped, and the worst possible thing to do was brood about it. Much better to shove the
incident to the back of his mind. Hell, in the old days in Chicago murder hadn't meant much. Why should it mean
anything now?
Nevertheless, it did. Tracy had always taken pains to keep his skirts clear of messes. By a natural trick of
compensation, he had come to regard his blackmailing activities with tolerant satisfaction. In this world, the race was
to the swift. A slow horse was handicappedтАФunless he got the needle. A man smart enough to use a hypo stimulant
wasn't necessarily a rat, except according to narrow standards, which did not concern Tracy.
If you were clever enough to get your hands on smart money, that was all to the good. And it was far, far better
than living on a reporter's salary alone.
But Tracy was shaken. "Self-defense," he said under his breath, and lit a cigarette, illegal in this fire-hazard area.
He put it out immediately. It wouldn't do to be stopped by an officer.
A giant stood threateningly, in the glare of the headlights, gnarled and menacing. Tracy wrenched at the wheel in
sudden panic. It was nothing but an oak; just the same, the illusion was frightening. Briefly Tracy had seen the huge
face of a hag peering at him, loose mouth writhing, eyes flaming green.
It was gone now, but the aftertaste of fear was sour in Tracy's mouth. He turned the car into a side road and
parked, staring at nothing. Not so good. He couldn't afford hysteria.
He drank whiskey, shuddered, and wiped his lips with his hand. It was trembling a little. Tracy lay back and
breathed deeply, his eyes closed. He'd be all right in a minute. The canyon road was steep and winding, and he
preferred not to risk it till his hands stopped shaking.
Meantime, he remembered Gwinn's diary. It lay on the seat beside him, a flat brown volume rather smaller than an
octavo, and Tracy picked it up, switching on the overhead light.
Oddly enough, the gold script on the front said, "Samuel Tracy."
Tracy looked at that for a long time. He touched the white oval with an exploratory finger. It was smooth and
glossyтАФparchment, perhaps. Finally he opened the book at random. The page numberтАФ17тАФin the upper right-hand
corner was in large block numerals, and there was only one sentence, in crude type that seemed hand set. It said:
"Werewolves can't climb oak trees."
Tracy read it again. It still said the same thing. Frowning, he turned the page.
"He's bluffing."
That was allтАФtwo words. Cryptic, to say the least. Obviously, this wasn't Gwinn's diary. It was more like
Finnegans Wake.
Tracy flipped the pages. Page 25 said:
"Try the windshield."
Page 26 said:
"Declare the truth and fear no man." A few pages later, Tracy found this: "Deny everything."
There were other ambiguous comments: "Don't worry about poor crops," "Aim at his eye," "Don't speak till
you're back on earth," and "Try again." As a collection of aphorisms, the book was more than a little cryptic. But Tracy