"Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

often now; sometimes he slept a little, woke to hear his own groans. Slowly,
he moved on upwards. They were all around him, he realized during one of his
rests. The intruders he had sensed before were still here, everywhere,
watching him, surrounding him, pressing against his head, waiting. He came to
the rifle and rested by it, moved on. Then the prints stopped. He lay with his
cheek on the floor and knew one of the bloody trails was his own. Straight
ahead was a closet with an open door; the bloody path ended there. He sighed
tiredly and lifted his head, tried to see past a blackness that filled the
doorway from top to bottom. Inky blackness, nothing else. He rested. They were
here, everywhere, he thought again, from a great distance. Waiting. Suddenly
he jerked awake. Waiting for him to bleed to death. Waiting for him to die!
Slowly he began to retrace his trail. He rolled most of the way down the
stairs. He found himself at the Buick and fell onto the front seat and rested
a long time. It was getting dark. Key, he thought. He had tossed his keys to
Gary. Without any thought or plan, he found Elinor keys in her purse on the
passenger seat. He got the car started, and aimed at the state road. When he
reached it, he slumped forward and slept.

He heard a soothing voice, felt hands on him, tried to return to the drifting
state that was.not sleep, but pleasanter because it was dreamless oblivion.
The voice persisted. "Can you hear me? Come on, Mr. Loesser, wake up. You're
safe now. You'll be all right. Wake up, Mr. Loesser."

He was being pulled back in spite of himself. "A little more, Mr. Loesser,
then you can sleep again." The voice changed slightly. "He can hear you and
answer if he wants to." A different voice spoke. "Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?"
He opened his eyes, realized that only one seemed to work, and reached up to
feel a bandage that covered most of his face. He remembered being awake
earlier, remembered wanting, being denied, a sip of water, being allowed to
sleep again. "Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?" The speaker was out of focus,
thin-faced, sad-looking. "Gary," Carson said and heard it as a croak. "Did you
say Gary? You mean Gary Danvers?" "Gary," he said again and closed his eye.
"My wife ," "Yes. Your wife? What about your wife?" "Dead," he said in his
strange croaking voice. The other voice came back, the soothing one. "Go back
to sleep now, Mr. Loesser. Your wife died a long time ago. Remember? That was
a long time ago." "What that all about?" the sad man asked. "Heconfused.
Shock, trauma, loss of blood. His wife died in an airplane accident more than
five years ago. Let him rest now. You won't get much out of him until the
Demerol wears off, anyway" "Okay. Okay. I'll drop in tomorrow." Carson Danvers
drifted and thought that if he were John Loesser, he would have grieved for
his dead wife a long time ago. He slept.

10

Chapter

lIMr. Loesser," Dr. McChesney said, "go back home. Don't hang around here. I
can recommend a doctor to oversee your convalescence now. You need to be with
friends, relatives, people who know you and care for you. All this brooding
about what you might have done is pointless, Mr. Loesser. I've talked to the