"deadonarrival" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

"That's what I want to find out," Ken Arnold said.


The night manager of the remodeled apartments on Buena Vista Drive let Ken Arnold into
Roger Higgins'studio room with a passkey. It was a cheap room, and shabby, and it told
volumes about the kid's life that Higgins, alive, would never have revealed.

A formal-dress suit hung over the back of a chair and a stiff-bosom shirt was draped
over the doorknob of a closet. The closet, itself, was empty, save for an odd pair of
slacks and some ties and two soiled shirts on the floor.

On the bureau were ticket stubs to the opening, two nights ago, of one of the hit shows
on Broadway, and an engraved invitation to a wealthy society girl's debut was propped
against the mirror. There were swizzle sticks and match pads from the most exclusive clubs,
places where the guests are somebody because everybody can't get by the front door.

And on the other side of the room. on a narrow table with a chair pulled up to it, were
a ten-cent box of cheese crackers and an empty container of coffee. A small box, with three
cigarette butts, carefully pinched and straightened, to be smoked some other time, lay
nearby.

Ken Arnold knew the type. He knew Roger Higginses all over town. Not this Roger Higgins,
of course, but fellows like him.

Society scavengers, they were called. Wolves. Chiselers. Party crashers. Kids who were
somehow able to get into the best places, the wealthy homes; who lived on other people's
dinners and loaded up on free liquor; who took everything they could get their hands on but
the check and most times didn't have enough themselves to pay their room rent or buy a meal.

And sometimes they got into trouble!

The little studio on Buena Vista told Arnold that Roger Higgins was one of these. It
wasn't much, but it was a lead.

Ken Arnold heard a sound at the door and whirled. But the door must have been all the
way open before he was aware that he was not alone in the room. Even as he turned, something
hard smashed down on his head, catching him just above the temple. He felt his knees and
legs go lifeless beneath him, and he groped wildly through the swirling blur of motion that
swept around him. But already his arms were growing numb, and he knew he was falling. Then
another blow came down, and he went on down to the floor on his face. And he was unconscious.


It didn't seem that he had been out very long; and when he came to, his head was throbbing
madly. His body was drenched, and, at first, he thought it was blood that was coming from
where he had been hit on the head and that it was running into his eyes. Then he knew that
it was water, because his hair was wet and his shirt and coat and pants were wet.

For a long moment, he lay there, and he remembered the door opening as he had been
searching the room. He remembered how he had turned, but not quickly enough, and that he
had caught only a vague glimpse of his attacker just before that hard weight fell.