"071 (B066) - Mad Mesa (1939-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Trying to get rid of the creeps, Tom Idle made an elaborate business of stretching and scratching himself, then of retying his shoestrings and necktie, for loosening shoestrings and necktie were about the only bedtime preparations he'd made since a park bench was his hotel.
Again this morning, the world was full of beautiful sunshine, with birds singing in the park trees, and the air pleasant with the fruity odor of the orchards surrounding oasislike Salt Lake City, while a few clouds were sitting like big white rabbits on top of the black mountains to the eastward.
But Tom Idle was in no frame of mind to enjoy a balmy morning.
He was looking at his shoes.
They were not his shoes!
They were gaudy yellow shoesЧhis shoes had been black and scuffed. He dropped his eyes and stared at the necktie he was wearing, and it was not his necktie; it was flashy green and yellow in color, whereas his necktie had been a subdued brown. Nor was the shirt his, nor the suit. All the clothes he was wearing were different.
He stared in horror at his handsЧfor they were not his hands either, it seemed; they looked pale, and on one finger was a ring he had never seen before, a big, ugly, yellow gold ring with the top carved in the shape of a skull.
Tom Idle stood up, feeling like a man having a bad dream, and walked out of the park.
He did not see Officer Sam Stevens just then.
Since the incredible thing had already started to happen to Tom Idle, it was doubtful if it would have made any difference had he seen the cop at this juncture.
Tom Idle was partially rid of most of his creeps by the time he entered Skookum's lunchroom.
But he got them again when Skookum grabbed a gun and began shooting at him.
THERE were some brief preliminaries.
First, Skookum saw Tom Idle and jumped up. Skookum was eating his own breakfast, and he knocked his cup of coffee to the floor.
"Hondo Weatherbee!" Skookum yelled.
Tom Idle began to think this was all some kind of a gag. They must be having some fun with him.
"Hey, cut it out!" he said. "Heap much is enough."
But Skookum stood so rigidly and stared with such ghastly fixity, that Tom Idle suddenly saw that it could not be acting. Skookum was not that good an actor.
"Cut it," Tom Idle muttered. "You know me. I'm Tom Idle, the guy you staked to ham and eggs yesterday. Some darn fool swapped clothes on me."
Skookum licked his lips.
"Who you trying to kid, Hondo?" he snarled. "I know that nice kid. You're not him."
Tom Idle then did something which he habitually did when he was ill at ease; he put his hands in his coat pockets. In thinking it all over later, he realized that Skookum might have thought he was reaching for a gun.
Skookum made a wild dive, got down behind the counter, came up with a sawed-off shotgun. He blazed away.
Gun roar was ear-splitting. The blast blew a hole in the lunchroom wall so close to Tom Idle's head that he could have put his arm through it.
There was no joke about this. That shotgun was real, and Skookum was trying to kill him.
Tom Idle wheeled, ducked, dived out of the lunchroom. He ran. It was only a short distance to the park. He turned into the park. Behind, the shotgun slammed again. Shot cut leaves off the trees, and frightened birds flew up all over the park.
The Officer Sam Stevens met Tom Idle for the first time that morning.
Officer Stevens was a tall young man, a year or two older than Tom Idle. He came racing through the park to see what all the shooting was about, rounded a clump of bushes, and almost bumped into Tom Idle. Tom Idle never forgot that meeting.
"Hey help me!" Tom Idle panted. "That fool, Skookum, is trying to kill me!"
Officer Stevens stared at Tom Idle.
"Damn!" he barked. "It's Hondo Weatherbee!"
He struck with his club, swung a blow at Tom Idle's head. Tom Idle's reaction was instinctive. He dodged, and the club hit his head a glancing blow; he grabbed the club and they fought over it. Idle got the officer's billy.
Then the cop reached for his revolver.
Tom Idle struck the officer down with his own club. There was nothing else he could do. Something fantastic had happened, and he wasn't a young man named Tom Idle in search of a job; he was a sallow-skinned, garishly dressed man named Hondo Weatherbee, and everyone was either afraid of him or wanted to kill him. He could not understand it.
Officer Sam Stevens fell senseless.
Tom Idle dropped the club, whirled and ran. He did not know how long Officer Stevens would remain unconscious, and he had no idea at what instant Skookum might haul into view with his shotgun.
"The thing is to get out of here!" he thought.
Professional humorists claim that anything so unbelievable that it is preposterous constitutes a joke. Tom Idle was bewildered, frightened, horror-stricken; but one thing he did knowЧthat no part of the last few minutes had been a joke. Everybody had been in dead earnest, from the seedy bum whose gasp had awakened him on the park bench, to Skookum and his shotgun and Officer Stevens and his pistol.
Probably the most incredible thing of all to Tom Idle was that he had gone to sleep wearing black shoes and a neat, if worn, blue suitЧand had awakened with strange yellow shoes and a gaudy suit. And his skin! His tanned brown skin! It had become pale! He was completely bewildered.
The appearance of the black-gloved man did not clarify the situation, either.
Chapter II. THE BLACK-GLOVED MAN
THE black-gloved man was in a car, and the machine apparently had been cruising around and around the park in search of Tom Idle. The car was a touring model, the top down. The black-gloved man drove, and he was craning his neck as though hunting someone. Apparently, it was Tom Idle he sought, because he sent the car to Idle's side.
"Hondo!" he yelled. "Get in!"
Tom Idle did not like the looks of the man. Probably he would never have gotten in the car, except for the fact that Skookum appeared in the distance, fired a shotgun blast, and two or three shot stung Tom Idle's skin. He decided to get in the car after all. The stranger at least looked friendly.
The moment Tom Idle landed in the car, the vehicle leaped into motion. Within two minutes, it was breaking the speed limit; and in five minutes, it was going faster than Tom Idle had ever before ridden in a car.
"What in the hell happened?" asked the black-gloved man.
"I don't know," Tom Idle said truthfully.
"You went in the park with that bottle of stuff," the stranger snapped. "That was over two hours ago. You told me to cruise around and be ready to pick you up. While I'm doing that, I see Seedy Smith come tearing out of the park as if a devil were after him."
Tom Idle stared blankly. Here was another man who thought he was someone else.
"WhoЧwho is Seedy Smith?" he asked uncertainly.