Читать книгу Raiders of the Red Death - Emile C. Tepperman - Страница 5
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ОглавлениеIn New York City, a furtive man slunk out of the Times Square subway station, lingered a moment at the corner of Forty-second Street and Times Square, glancing behind him frequently as if he were fearful of being followed.
He was a thin man; his hands were small, almost effeminate. His face was long, his features sharp, pinched with some sort of inward terror. He belonged, obviously, to one of the Latin races.
His eyes strayed upward and across Forty-second Street, to the Times Building. There, high above the heads of the passing crowds, was the ingenious news strip consisting of an arrangement of electric light bulbs, by which the latest happenings all over the world were flashed before the eyes of passing New Yorkers. The electric-light bulbs carried the illuminated words clear around the building, and the effect was that of a continuous sentence which could be read by anyone walking on any side of the tall Times Building.
Now the thin man seemed to shiver as he read the moving sentence that flashed around:
AZTECS IN FULL CONTROL OF MEXICO...
THEIR LEADER NAMES HIMSELF MONTEZUMA THE THIRD...
DECLARES WAR AGAINST UNITED STATES...
OUR PRESIDENT DECLARES THAT UNITED STATES TROOPS
WILL CRUSH AZTECS WITHIN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS...
The little man shivered as he read, and mumbled to himself under his breath. He cast a last, backward glance at the subway kiosk from which he had emerged into the street, then suddenly made up his mind and turned to enter the drugstore on the corner.
Behind him in the street, passing New Yorkers were reading further news items on the Times Building:
THIRTEEN PERSONS REPORTED KILLED
IN STRANGE EXPLOSIONS IN VARIOUS PARTS OF COUNTRY...
THOUGHT TO BE WORK OF FOREIGN SABOTAGE AGENTS...
METHOD OF BOMBINGS REMAINS A MYSTERY...
The little man did not see these last news flashes, because he was already in the drugstore, crouched at one of the telephone booths.
Had he not been so nervous, he might have noticed the man who had come out of the subway kiosk behind him, and who had slid into a convenient doorway while he himself hesitated at the corner. Now, the second man strolled casually past the drug-store, peered in, saw the other in the telephone booth. He walked by the drug-store entrance, disappeared down the street.
The thin man, meanwhile, had inserted his nickel in the slot, and dialed 211—the long distance operator. He asked for a number in Washington, D.C., and two minutes later he was speaking viciously into the transmitter.
"Thees," he said cautiously, "ees Miguel Esprada. You—remember?"
"Yes!" a crisp voice at the other end answered. "Did you find out anything?"
The thin man glanced about him furtively, brought his mouth close to the instrument. "You 'eve promise' me that you weel pay ten thousan' dollar—"
"No," the voice at the other end broke in. "I promised you five thousand. Come, Esprada, I'm very busy. Have you five thousand dollars' worth of information for me?"
Esprada's eyes gleamed with avarice. "I 'ave, señor. But I am in the very great danger. You mus' send two of your—w'at-you-call?—operators to meet me and take me to Washington. There I weel talk. I can tell you w'ere is the secret 'eadquarters of the Aztecs in New York. I can tell you 'ow they make the men to explode. But you must be careful. There is a leak in your War Department. The nephew of the Secretary—Vance—"
His voice broke in a thin shriek of terror as the air in the drug-store seemed suddenly to change. Customers and clerks turned at the note of terror in Esprada's voice. A hush suddenly descended upon the noisy interior of the store.
And through that hush rose Esprada's fear—chilled voice: "The exploding death! Help—"
He started to run for the door, and suddenly his panic was communicated to the throng in the store. A mad stampede began toward the street. Jerks hurdled counters, men and women pushed each other roughly out of the way. And Esprada raced faster than all.
But he was too late. Abruptly, as if a huge hand had reached out from infinity, all that throng in the brilliantly lit store ceased to run, staggered, fought against an overwhelming power that seemed to be pushing the eyeballs out of their heads, to be causing the blood to burst from their nostrils and their eardrums.
And then, each individual in that store seemed to burst from within!
With a terrific series of popping explosions, all those people in the store burst into torn and bloody fragments of flesh and bone and clothing—as if a time bomb inside them had exploded!
Each individual in that store seemed to burst from within!
The air was filled with blood and the stench of burned flesh, with flying fragments of humanity. The electric lights shattered into bits, plunging the interior into darkness. The plate—glass windows of the store burst outwards in shards, catapulting bits of human flesh into the street. Not a soul was left alive in the store...
Outside, people fled from the scene of the sudden holocaust, shrieking in terror. Something dreadful, inexplicable, had happened. The corner of Times Square and Forty-second Street was transformed abruptly from a busy, bustling intersection, into a charnel house.
Police patrol cars raced toward the scene with sirens screaming. Fire trucks roared through the streets. Gas and electric emergency squads arrived. Police reserves established a wide cordon about the corner, while other bluecoats attempted to quell the near-panic of persons in the subway system below who had heard the explosion.
Reporters sped to nearby telephones to rap out the dreadful news to their papers, while high across the street, on the tall Times Building, the news-strip continued to flash its items:
AZTECS REPORTED MOBILIZING TEXAS BORDER...
SPOKESMAN AT WHITE HOUSE STATES THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM...
And the man who had been Migual Esprada a few minutes ago, was no more. Bits of him lay scattered on Times Square, together with shreds of the other unfortunate patrons of that store. The secrets he had offered to sell would never be sold...
