Читать книгу Death Lives in Our House - Arthur Leo Zagat - Страница 3

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DAN SAWYER was tired as he climbed the musty- smelling, dimly lit stairs of the tenement. Tired, hungry and despairing, he had walked the dreary streets all day, hearing again and again the grunted, "No job for you—sorry." Half the night he had paced the deserted sidewalks, trying to flog himself into coming home, into facing the mute question in Norma's eyes, into seeing hope drain out of them once more as his head shook in silent negation. She wouldn't say anything, but she would be thinking of Cora, of their little daughter's tattered shoes and the insatiate demand of the child's growing body for food they could not afford.

He hadn't eaten since his scanty breakfast, and there was no strength in his legs. They buckled under him as he reached the first floor landing, and he had to catch hold of the newel post to keep from tumbling back down the stairs. Peeling, scabrous wallpaper wavered in the flicker of a cheap light bulb, which revealed the blurred lettering on the door he faced. Sawyer couldn't read the sign, but he knew that it spelt:

TOORAH

WISDOM FROM BEYOND THE VEIL

The door burst open, and the pungent odor of incense gusted out. Then it thudded shut. Two dark-clothed men crouched in front of it, taut, listening. Sawyer peered at them, dazedly.

"Gawd," one whined, a weazened, undersized fellow. "I had to do it."

"Shut up," the other grunted. "You're chattering too damn much."

One big-shouldered, simian-armed brute was Lefty Lane, Sawyer's neighbor across the landing, and the other was Hen Reddon, from the top floor. Tough customers. But they weren't tough now. They were shaking. Their faces were pallid, greenish, and their dilated eyes were dark with some creeping terror.

"Come on, let's beat it before—Hey!" Reddon jumped forward. His gloved hands grabbed Sawyer's shoulder, dug into it. "This guy's seen us..." His other arm swept up. Against the light Dan saw a stubbed, cruel rod of steel in its fist. His muscles were waterweak, and Reddon's grip held him paralyzed. The rod arced down to crash into his scalp, to scatter his brains... Lefty's big paw grabbed it, wrenched it from the snarling killer's hold.

"Be your age," he growled. "It's Dan Sawyer. Dan's all right. Ain't yuh, Dan?"

Sawyer couldn't talk, couldn't answer. The thug seemed to take his silence for assent. Lane's hand fumbled at Dan's and he felt something hard in his palm. "Cache this for me," Lefty whispered. "I'll get it from you later. My old woman gave it to Toorah for a reading, an' I just made him give it back to me. I don't want her to know about it, or she'll raise particular hell. Don't tell your wife about it—or nobody. An' here's a fin for takin' care of it for me."

Dan thrust the thing Lane had given him into a trouser pocket, snatched at the bill. His brain was in a whirl, he couldn't think straight. But he knew five dollars would mean the wolf pushed away from the door for another week. He'd tell Norma he'd earned it doing odd jobs along the shore.

"Hide it good," Lefty repeated, shoving him toward the stairs.

Sawyer went on up mechanically. He didn't realize what had happened, to what he had committed himself. All he knew was that he wanted to get to Norma, to give her the money. A steel band was about his head, was tightening till the very bone threatened to collapse. He felt ill. There was a roaring in his ears.

Because of that roaring he did not hear Lane's whisper. "He'll know he's in the mess with us when he finds out where that come from. He's tied up pretty, an' he can't squeal."

Sawyer staggered, realized vaguely that he was on his own landing. The door gave to his shaking, blind hand. The cold grey of dawn filtered in through the window of his and Norma's room. He reeled in, fell across the bed.

"Dan," Norma gasped, "what's the matter?" Her voice was miles away and he couldn't see her. "Dan! You're sick. You're terribly sick. I'm going for Doc Baldwin..."

The grey fog receded a little and the outlines of the bedchamber were vaguely perceptible. Norma wasn't there. She had gone away. There was something he had to do. Oh yes! Hide what Lane had given him. Hide the... What was that?

Dan Sawyer's hand groped into his pocket. He stared at the thing in his palm. It glowed there with milky, secret fires, like a baneful eye glaring at him. It was a gem, an opal almost as large as a pigeon's egg.

"Hide it!" Lefty's urgent command hammered at the throbbing torture within Dan's skull. He lurched to his feet, started for the door. The pain was excruciating now, and black clouds swirled in his brain...