"Robert A. Heinlein - The unpleasant profession of Johathan Ho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

"Cyn -- "
"Yes, Brain."
"You haven't touched this chair?"
"Of course not. I polished the arms as usual before he showed up."
"That's not what I mean. I meant since he left. Did he ever take off his gloves?"
"Wait a minute. Yes, I'm sure he did. I looked at his nails when he told his yarn
about them."
"So did I, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't nuts. Take a look at that surface."
She examined the polished chair arms, now covered with a thin film of gray dust.
The surface was unbroken -- no fingerprints. "He must never have touched them -- But he
did. I saw him. When he said, 'I'm frightened,' he gripped both arms. I remember noticing
how blue his knuckles looked."
"Collodion, maybe?"
"Don't be silly. There isn't even a smear. You shook hands with him. Did he have
collodion on his hands?"
"I don't think so. I think I would have noticed it. The Man with No Fingerprints.
Let's call him a ghost and forget it."
"Ghosts don't pay out hard cash to be watched."
"No, they don't. Not that I ever heard of." He stood up and marched out into the
breakfast nook, grabbed the phone and dialed long distance. "I want the Medical
Exchange in Dubuque, uh -- " He cupped the phone and called to his wife. "Say, honey,
what the hell state is Dubuque in?"
Forty-five minutes and several calls later he slammed the instrument back into its
cradle. "That tears it," he announced. "There is no St. George Rest Home in Dubuque.
There never was and probably never will be. And no Dr. Rennault."


III

"There he is!" Cynthia Craig Randall nudged her husband.
He continued to hold the Tribune in front of his face as if reading it. "I see him,"
he said quietly. "Control yourself. Yuh'd think you had never tailed a man before. Easy
does it."
"Teddy, do be careful."
"I will be." He glanced over the top of the paper and watched Jonathan Hoag
come down the steps of the swank Gotham Apartments in which he made his home.
When he left the shelter of the canopy he turned to the left. The time was exactly seven
minutes before nine in the morning.
Randall stood up, folded his paper with care, and laid it down on the bus-station
bench on which he had been waiting. He then turned toward the drugstore behind him,
dropped a penny in the slot of a gum-vending machine in the shop's recessed doorway. In
the mirror on the face of the machine he watched Hoag's unhurried progress down the far
side of the street. With equal lack of rush he started after him, without crossing the street.
Cynthia waited on the bench until Randall had had time enough to get a half block
ahead of her, then got up and followed him.
 Hoag climbed on a bus at the second corner. Randall took advantage of a traffic-
light change which held the bus at the corner, crossed against the lights, and managed to
reach the bus just as it was pulling out. Hoag had gone up to the open deck; Randall
seated himself down below.
Cynthia was too late to catch the bus, but not too late to note its number. She