"Edmond Hamilton - The Sun Smasher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

of the Middle West, and he looked at them, but he didn't know any of them. After all, ten years was a
long time to be away. Still, there ought to be at least one familiar face to welcome him home. Ten years
wasn't that long.

He turned right at the old bank building and went down Hollins Street. Two long straggling blocks. The
house, anyway, should still be standing.

It wasn't.

Banning stopped. He looked up and down the street. No mistake. This was the place, and the houses on
either side were exactly as he remembered them, but where his uncle's house had stood was nothing now
but weeds.

"Burned down,” he thought. “Or been moved to another lot, maybe."

But he felt uneasily that there was something wrong about it. A house isn't easily erased from the surface
of the earth. There's always something—a rubble-heap where the cellar was filled in, the outline of the
foundation, a trace of the old walks, the trees and garden beds.

There was nothing here, nothing but a weedy vacant lot. That didn't seem right at all. He felt
disappointed—the house you had grown up in was like a part of you, the focal point of your whole
childhood, too full of memories to be easily lost. But he was puzzled, too, and oddly worried.

"The Greggs would know,” be thought, and went on to the next house and up onto its porch. “If they still
live here."

His knock was answered by an old man he didn't know, a pink-faced cheery little gnome who came
around from the back yard with a garden hoe in his hands. He didn't mind talking. But he couldn't seem
to understand Banning's questions at all. He kept shaking his head, and finally he said, “You've got the
wrong street, young fellow. Never was any Jesse Banning lived around here.

"It was ten years ago,” Banning explained. “Maybe before you came here—"

The old man stopped smiling. “Listen, I'm Martin Wallace. I've lived in this house forty-two years. You
ask anybody. And I never heard of any Bannings. Furthermore, there's never been any house on that
vacant lot. I know. I own it."

The first touch of real fright slid over Banning. “But I lived in a house on that lot! I lived in it for years
when I was a boy. It belonged to my uncle. You weren't here then, the Greggs lived here, they had a
daughter with two yellow pigtails, and a boy named Sam. I used to play—"

"See here,” said the old man. All his friendliness was gone, he looked a little angry and a little alarmed. “If
this is a joke, it ain't funny. If it ain't a joke, you're drunk or crazy. You get out of here!"

Banning stared at him. He didn't move. “Please,” he said. “That apple tree, at the foot of your lot—I fell
out of it when I was eight years old and broke my wrist. You don't forget things like that."

The old man dropped his hoe, and backed into his house. “If you ain't off my place in two seconds,” he
said, “I'm going to call the police.” He slammed the door, and bolted it.