Читать книгу The Naked Storm - C.M. Kornbluth - Страница 4

II

The three men in the hotel room jumped to their feet as the door slammed open.

“Police,” a tall man in the doorway announced. Uniformed patrolmen moved around him and began to search the room, picking up papers, briefcases, opening drawers and closets.

The oldest of the three men, bald, wearing a richly conservative brown suit, said: “I suppose you have a warrant.”

“Two of them. Search and arrest. Put on your coats and let’s go.”

The man in the brown suit took a heavy overcoat from a closet and began to wind a muffler around his neck. He asked almost casually: “What’s the charge?”

“Conspiracy to violate gambling laws. Let’s go.”

“May I phone a lawyer?”

“From the station house. Come on.”

One of the uniformed men, a sergeant, was carefully removing something bulky from the rear of a high closet shelf. It was a tape recorder, and its reels were still turning. The man in the brown suit raised his eyebrows. He and another of the room’s original occupants looked at the third man. He told the third man sadly: “You think you can get away with such goings-on? I’m surprised at you.”

The police lieutenant, admitting nothing, nevertheless gave the third man a chin-up glance. Everybody in the room, however, knew that the third man’s death warrant had just been signed.

It would be executed some day by means of a speeding truck or a bomb wired to his car’s ignition, or a shotgun blast through a window or fists and feet and newspaper-wrapped lead pipe in a deserted place where nobody would hear his screams except his murderers.

It would happen just as soon as they were ready for it to happen, not a minute sooner or later. He would have to use the time that remained to him as efficiently as possible and try not to worry too much.