"Eric Frank Russell - Mechanical Mice2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

contents of the grille-protected window.
He glanced upward at a faintly luminescent path of cloud behind which lay the hidden moon.
Turning, he strolled on. A cat sneaked past him, treading cautiously, silently, and hugging the
angle of the wall. His sharp eyes detected its slinking shape even in the nighttime gloom, but
he ignored it and progressed to the corner.
Back of him, the cat came below the window through which he just had stared. It stopped,
one forefoot half-raised, its ears cocked forward. Then it flattened belly-low against the
concrete, its burning orbs wide, alert, intent. Its tail waved slowly from side to side.
Something small and bright came skittering toward it, mov┬мing with mouselike speed and
agility close in the angle of the wall. The cat tensed as the object came nearer. Suddenly, the
thing was within range, and the cat pounced with lithe eager┬мness. Hungry paws dug at a
surface that was not soft and furry, but hard, bright, and slippery. The thing darted around
like a clockwork toy as the cat vainly tried to hold it. Finally, with an angry snarl, the cat
swiped it viciously, knocking it a couple of yards where it rolled onto its back and emitted
softly protesting clicks and tiny, urgent impulses that its fe┬мline attacker could not sense.
Gaining the gutter with a single leap, the cat crouched again. Something else was coming.
The cat muscled, its eyes glowed. Another object slightly similar to the curious thing it had
just captured, but a little bit bigger, a fraction noisier, and much different in shape. It
resembled a small, gold-plated cylinder with a conical front from which projected a slender
blade, and it slid along swiftly on invisible wheels.
Again the cat leaped. Down on the corner, Burke heard its brief shriek and following gurgle.
The sound didn't bother Burke--he'd heard cats and rats and other vermin make all sorts of
queer noises in the night. Phlegmatically, he contin┬мued on his beat.
Three quarters of an hour later, Police Officer Burke had worked his way around to the fatal
spot. Putting his flash on the body, he rolled the supine animal over with his foot. Its throat
was cut. Its throat had been cut with an utter savagery that had half-severed its head from its
body. Burke scowled down at it. He was no lover of cats himself, but he found difficulty in
imagining anyone hating like that!
"Somebody," he muttered, "wants flaying alive."
His big foot shoved the dead cat back into the gutter where street cleaners could cart it
away in the morning. He turned his attention to the window, saw the light still glowing upon
the untouched safe. His mind was still on the cat while his eyes looked in and said that
something was wrong. Then he dragged his attention back to business, realized what was
wrong, and sweated at every pore. It wasn't the safe, it was the window.
In front of the window the serried trays of valuable rings still gleamed undisturbed. To the
right, the silverwares still shone untouched. But on the left had been a small display of
delicate and extremely expensive watches. They were no long┬мer here, not one of them. He
remembered that right in front had rested a neat, beautiful calendar-chronometer priced at a
year's salary. That, too, was gone.
The beam of his flash trembled as he tried the gate, found it fast, secure. The door behind it
was firmly locked. The transom was closed, its heavy wire guard still securely fixed. He went
over the window, eventually found a small, neat hole, about two inches in diameter, down in
the corner on the side nearest the missing display.
Burke's curse was explosive as he turned and ran to the corner. His hand shook with
indignation while it grabbed the telephone from its box. Getting headquarters, he recited his
story. He thought he'd a good idea of what had happened, fancied he'd read once of a
similar stunt being pulled elsewhere.
Looks like they cut a disk with a rotary diamond, lifted it out with a suction cup, then fished
through the hole with a telescopic rod." He listened a moment, then said. "Yes, yes. That's
just what gets meтАФthe rings are worth ten times as much."