"Rog Phillips - The Yelllow Pill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phillips Rog)

"But that's the truth," Helena said. "You told me all about it when I started working for you. You also told
me that while you still had your reason about you I was to solemnly promise that I would never accept an
invitation from you for dinner or anything else, because business could not mix with pleasure. Do you
remember that?"

"I remember," Cedric said. "A nice pat rationalization in any man's reality to make the rejection be my
own before you could have time to reject me yourself. Preserving the ego is the first principle of
madness."

"But it isn't!" Helena said. "Oh, darling, I'm here! This is real! I don't care if you fire me or not. I've loved
you forever, and you mustn't let that mass murderer get you down. I actually think he isn't insane at all,
but has just figured out a way to seem insane so he won't have to pay for his crime."

"You think so?" Cedric said, interested. "It's a possibility. But he would have to be as good a psychiatrist
as I amтАФYou see? Delusions of grandeur."

"Sure," Helena said, laughing thinly. "Napoleon was obviously insane because he thought he was
Napoleon."

"Perhaps," Cedric said. "But you must admit that if you are real, my taking this yellow pill isn't going to
change that, but only confirm the fact."

"And make it impossible for you to do your work for a week," Helena said.

"A small price to pay for sanity," Cedric said. "No, I'm going to take it."

"You aren't!" Helena said, reaching for it.

Cedric picked it up an instant before she could get it. As she tried to get it away from him, he evaded her
and put it in his mouth. A loud gulp showed he had swallowed it.

He sat back and looked up at Helena curiously.

"Tell me, Helena," he said gently. "Did you know all the time that you were only a creature of my
imagination? The reason I want to know isтАФ"

He closed his eyes and clutched his head in his hands.

"God!" he groaned. "I feel like I'm dying! I didn't feel like this the other time I took one." Suddenly his
mind steadied, and his thoughts cleared. He opened his eyes.

On the chart table in front of him, the bottle of yellow pills lay on its side, pills scattered all over the table.
On the other side of the control room lay Jerry Bocek, his back propped against one of the four gear
lockers, sound asleep, with so many ropes wrapped around him that it would probably be impossible for
him to stand up.

Against the far wall were three other gear lockers, two of them with their paint badly scorched, the third
with its door half melted off.

And in various positions about the control room were the half-charred bodies of five blue-scaled