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

He stared at the bar shadows on the cell floor until his eyes hurt.
"Hey!" a voice said. "Wake up!"
Tom Idle turned his head to look at the speaker.
The man was big; he was incredibly hugeЧand as long as Tom Idle knew him afterward, the man appeared to get each day a little bigger. Maybe it was the increasing evil of the man that made it seem so. Each day that you knew him, you realized he was a little more vicious than you had thought he possibly could be.
"Who . . . who are you?" Tom Idle stuttered.
"Big Eva," the man growled. "Who'd you think it'd be, Hondo?"
There was nothing distorted about Big Eva's size; he was not puffy, he did not seem to have a thick neckЧjust big. He was about seven feet tall.
"Where am I?" Tom Idle demanded.
Big Eva chuckled. "If it's not the Utah State Penitentiary, I've wasted three years in the wrong place."
"How long have I been here?" Tom Idle asked.
"Eleven years and three days." Big Eva showed large snaggle teeth in a grin. "Mean to say you don't remember?"
Tom Idle was stupefied.
"I've been in here eleven years?" he croaked.
Big Eva pointed at the cell wall beside Idle's bunk. On the wall was a series of marks made with a pencil, marks in groups of seven, as if they represented days and weeks.
"Count it up on your calendar, if you don't believe me," the giant convict said.
Tom Idle gripped the rail of his bunk. His head ached, felt as if shingle nails were being driven into his skull. His self-control slipped, and suddenly he was on his feet, gripping the barred cell door, rattling it madly.
"The warden!" he screamed. "I want to talk to the warden!"
A burly man in uniform appeared before the door. A penitentiary guard, Tom Idle presumed.
"How'd you like solitary confinement?" the guard asked harshly.
Then Big Eva had Tom Idle by the elbow and was pulling him back.
"I dunno what's got into you, Hondo," Big Eva growled. "You're startin' the day wrong."
THAT day was a nightmare for Tom Idle, and it was the first of a series. Because there seemed nothing else to do, he went to breakfast with the rest of the convicts, and later to work in the overall shop. As Hondo Weatherbee, it developed that he was supposed to know all about operating one of the sewing machines; but since he knew nothing about the device, he at once got the thread snarled, then accidentally did something which broke the machine. For this, he was put in solitary confinement the rest of the day, the guards thinking he had broken the machine maliciously.
He took off a shoe and beat the steel door of the cell. He also kept up a steady shouting, demanding to see the warden.
Later in the afternoon, they took him to the warden's office.
The instant he entered the warden's room, Tom Idle yanked to a stop and stared.
There was a huge mirror on the wall. Tom Idle was seeing himself for the first time since things had started to happen to him.
His face was differentЧand yet, not completely. It was sallow. The cheeks seemed lumpy. He brought his hands to his face and explored, discovered that there were indeed lumps in his cheeks that felt as though they might be old scar tissue. But his eyes were the same. Bloodshot with strain, it was true; but still his eyes.
"Ahem," said a voice.
Tom Idle realized he must seem a lunatic, staring at the mirror in that fashion.
"Are you the warden?" he asked.
"Yes."
The warden was a lean, weatherbeaten man who resembled the movie version of a cowboy sheriff. The squint that came from looking at far places was in his eyes, and he had a jaw built like the device they once put on the front of railway locomotives to knock cows off the tracks.
To this quiet, determined man, Tom Idle told his whole story exactly as it had happened, from his awakening in the Salt Lake City park to his becoming unconscious, presumably from the effects of a bullet, on the mountain road.
To all this, the penitentiary warden listened with intent interest.
"Let's feel the top of your head," he said.
Tom Idle let the warden's fingers explore in his hair.
"This where the bullet hit you?" the warden asked.
"Well, it hit me on the head."
"There's no scar there," the warden said.
"But something hit me!"
The warden's voice had turned cold, and now he got to his feet, put his capable hands on his lean hips, and looked Tom Idle up and down without sympathy.
"I don't know what your game is, Hondo Weatherbee. But you'd better not try to put anything over."
"I've told you the truth!" Tom Idle said desperately.
The warden snorted. "Do you remember how you were captured eleven years ago?"
"No! Of course not!"
"You were found asleep on a Salt Lake City park bench, and you were pursued by a policeman and a lunchroom man, and you were captured fleeing up the mountains in a car driven by an accomplice."
"I . . . butЧ"
"In other words," the warden snapped, "you've just been telling me the story of how you were captured eleven years ago. Only you trimmed the story up a bit."
Tom Idle was stunned.
"What date is this?" he wanted to know. "What day and year?"