Читать книгу The Science Fiction Anthology онлайн

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“What did you do?” she asked.

Suddenly he flung the pencil down, jumped from his chair and paced the floor. “I talked to an Agent last night,” he said.

“Where?”

“Bangkok.”

Mrs. Jamieson had to sit down. Finally she was able to ask, “How did it happen?”

“I broke into the office there to get at the records. He caught me.”

“What were you looking for?”

“I wanted to learn the names of the men who killed Father.” He said the word strangely. He was unaccustomed to it.

“Did you find them?”

He pointed to the paper on his desk. Mrs. Jamieson, trembling, picked it up and read the names. Seeing them there, written like any other names would be written, made her furious. How could they? How could the names of murderers look like ordinary names? When she thought them in her mind, they even sounded like ordinary names—and they shouldn’t! She had always thought that those names, if she ever saw them, would be filthy, unholy scratches on paper, evil sounds, like the rustle of bedclothes to a jealous lover listening at a keyhole. “Tom Palieu” didn’t sound evil; neither did “Al Jonson.” She was shaken by this more than she would permit Earl to see.