"014 (B007) - The Monsters (1934-04) - Lester Dent (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Not that Carl MacBride liked Bruno Hen. One day big MacBride had come upon Bruno
Hen killing a chicken for dinner. The breed had been choking the chicken to
death and taking great glee in prolonging the fowl's death agonies. After that,
Carl MacBride held a suspicion that no more cruel a breed than Bruno Hen ranged
North Michigan.
The fur market was strong the day Bruno Hen sold. His pelts brought more than he
had expected. So he decided to celebrate.
This decision was his second step toward disaster.
The Atlas Congress of Wonders was showing at Trapper Lake that day. The Atlas
did not amount to much as a circus, being financially very much down at the
heel. But it was the best Trapper Lake offered. So, by way of celebrating, Bruno
Hen went to the circus.
That was his third step in the direction of disaster. The fourth pace, taken all
unknowingly, was when he stopped in front of the freak side show.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" bawled the side show barker. "We have here a stupendous,
marvelous, awesome, dumbfounding sight! We have here the three most amazing
beings ever to come from darkest Africa! Look them over, good people. Try to
make yourselves realize that these monstrosities are actually human. They are
called the pinhead men. They are cannibal savages from darkest Africa!"
The Atlas Congress of Wonders was not above faking an occasional wild man or a
cannibal, but it chanced that these pinheads were the genuine articles. They had
been brought from Africa by a more affluent circus, which had then gone
bankrupt.
Bruno Hen moved close to the platform to stare at the three pinheads. He had
never seen such hideous humans.
The pinheads were squat, the tallest reaching barely to Bruno Hen's topmost vest
button. They were nearly as broad as tall, and they were as black as human skin
could practically be. They might have been oversize monkeys, shaven bare of
hair, dyed black, and given a high polish.
The contour of their heads was especially haunting. Instead of being rounded in
the fashion considered normal, the skulls sloped upward to a sharp point. The
pin-pointed heads were also very small in proportion to the rest of their
gnarled black bodies.
The pinheads had a trait of casting darting, animal-like looks about them. At
times they jumped up and down, after the fashion of chimpanzees. They emitted
caterwauling noises -- apparently their way of conversing with each other.
Trapper Lake citizens, looking on, probably thought this behavior was part of
the circus act. They were mistaken.
The poor pinheads were beings almost devoid of mentality.
BRUNO HEN looked at the pinheads and grinned from ear to ear. The idea of human
beings so handicapped by nature tickled him. He laughed out loud.
That laugh was his fifth step toward disaster.
The pinheads stared at Bruno Hen, their attention drawn by the laugh. Bruno
Hen's smile was derisive, but the pinheads did not have the intelligence to
realize that. They thought the grin friendly. They smiled back, jumped up and
down, and beat their chests with nubbins of fists. Back in the African bush,
that was the way one showed heart-to-heart friendship.
Bruno Hen thundered another laugh. It was the same kind of a laugh Carl MacBride
had heard when he had come upon the breed slowly throttling a chicken to satisfy
a lust for cruelty.