"Leiber,.Fritz.-.Conjure.Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Angrily he tossed the packet into the fireplace. The photograph fluttered along with it, lighted on the bed of embers, and flared before he could snatch it out. He had a glimpse of Tansy's face curling and blackening.
The packet took longer. A yellow glow crept across its surface, as the nap singed. Then a wavering four-inch flame shot up.
Simultaneously a 'chill went through him, though he still felt the heat from the embers. The room seemed to darken. There was a faint, mighty roaring in his ears, as of motors far underground. He had the sense of standing suddenly naked and unarmed before something menacingly alien.
Totem had turned around and was peering intently at the shadows in the far corner. With a spitting hiss she sprang sideways and darted from the room.
Norman realized he was trembling. Nervous reaction, he told himself. Might have known it was overdue.
The flame died, and once again there was only the frostily tinkling bed of embers.
Explosively, the phone began to jangle.
"Professor Saylor? I don't suppose you ever thought you'd hear from me again, did you? Well, the reason I'm calling you is that I always believe in letting people -- no matter who -- know where I stand, which is a lot more than can be said for some people."
Norman held the receiver away from his ear. The words, though jumbled, sounded like the beginning of a call, but the tone in which they were uttered didn't. Surely it would take half an hour of ranting before anyone could reach such a pitch of whining and -- yes, the word was applicable -- insane anger.
"What I want to tell you, Saylor, is this: I'm not going to take what's been done to me lying down. I'm not going to let myself stay flunked out of Hempnell. I'm going to demand to have my grades changed and you know why!"
Norman recognized the voice. There sprang into his mind the image of a pale, abnormally narrow face with pouting lips and protuberant eyes, crowned by a great shock of red hair. He cut in.
"Now listen Jennings, if you thought you were being treated unfairly, why didn't you present your grievances two months ago, when you got your grades?"
"Why? Because I let you pull the wool over my eyes. The openminded Professor Saylor! It wasn't until afterwards that I realized how you hadn't given me the proper attention, how I'd been slighted or bamboozled at conferences, how you didn't tell me I might flunk until it was too late, how you based your tests on trick questions from lectures I'd missed, how you discriminated against me because of my father's politics and because I wasn't the student type like that Bronstei.n. It wasn't until then --"
"Jennings, be reasonable. You flunked two courses besides mine last semester."
"Yes, because you passed the word around, influenced others against me, made them see me as you pretended to see me, made everyone --"
"And you mean to tell me you only now realized all this?"
"Yes I do. It just came to me in a flash as I was thinking here. Oh you were clever, all right. You had me eating out of your hand, you had me taking everything lying down, you had me scared. But once I got my first suspicion, I saw the whole plot clear as day. Everything fitted, everything led back to you, everything --"
"Including the fact that you were flunked out of two other colleges before you ever came to Hempnell?"
"There! I knew you were prejudiced against me from the start!"
"Jennings," Norman said wearily, "I've listened to all I'm going to. If you have any grievances, present them to Dean Gunnison."
"Do you mean to say you won't take any action?"
"Yes, I mean just that."
"Is that final?"
"Yes, it's final."
"Very well, Saylor. Then all I can say to you is, Watch out! Watch out, Saylor. Watch out!"
There was a click at the other end of the line. Norman gently put the phone back in its cradle. Oh, damn Theodore Jennings' parents! Not because they were hypocritical, vain, reactionary stuffed-shirts, but because they had such cruel pride that they were determined to shove through college a sensitive, selfish, wordy, somewhat subnormal boy, as narrow-minded as they were though not one-tenth as canny. And damn President Pollard for kowtowing so ineptly to their wealth and political influence that he had let the boy into Hempnell knowing perfectly well he'd fail.
Norman put the screen in front of the fire, switched out the living room lights and started toward the bedroom in the yellow glow fanning out from the hall.
Again the phone jangled. Norman looked at it curiously for a moment before he picked it up.
"Hello."
There was no reply. He waited for a few moments. Then, "Hello?" he repeated.
Still there was no reply, He was about to hang up when he thought he caught the sound of breathing -- excited, uneven, choked.
"Who is it?" he said sharply. "This is Professor Saylor. Please speak up."
He still seemed to hear the breathing. That was all.
Then out of the small black mystery of the phone came one word, enunciated slowly and with difficulty, in a voice that was deep yet throbbed with an almost fantastic intimacy.
"Darling!"
Norman swallowed. He didn't seem to recognize this voice at all. Before he could think what to say, it went on, more swiftly, but otherwise unchanged.
"Oh Norman, how glad I am that at last I've found the courage to speak where you wouldn't. I'm ready now, darling, I'm ready. You only need to come to me."
"Really?" Norman - temporized in amazement. It seemed to him now that there was something faintly familiar about the voice, not in its tone, but in its phrasing and rhythm.
"Come to me, lover, come to me. Take me to some place where we'll be alone. All alone. I'll be your mistress. I'll be your slave. Subject me to you. Do anything you want to me."
Norman wanted to laugh uproariously, yet his heart was pounding a little. Nice, perhaps, if it were real, but there was something so clownish about it. Was it a joke? he suddenly asked himself.
"I'm lying here talking to you without any clothes on, darling. There's just a tiny pink lamp by the bed. Oh take me to some lonely tropical isle and we'll make passionate love together. I'll hurt you and you'll hurt me. And then we'll swim in the moonlight with white petals drifting down onto the water."
Yes, it was a joke all right, it just had to be, he decided with a twinge of only half-humorous regret. And then there suddenly occurred to him the one person capable of playing such a joke.
"So come, Norman, come, and take me into the darkness," the voice continued.
"All right, I will," he replied briskly. "And after I've made passionate love to you I'll switch on the light and I'll say, 'Mona Utell, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Mona?" The voice rose in pitch. "Mona?"
"Yes indeed, Mona!" he assured her laughingly. "Ypu're the only actress I know, in fact the only woman I know, who could do that corny sultriness to such perfection. What would you have done if Tansy had answered? An imitation of Humphrey Bogart? How's New York? How's the party? What are you drinking?"
"Drinking? Norman, don't you know who this is?"
"Certainly. You're Mona Utell." But he had already grown doubtful. Long-drawn-out jokes weren't Mona's specialty. And the strange voice, with its aura of exasperating familiarity, was growing higher all the time.
"You really don't know who I am?"
"No, I guess I don't," he replied, speaking a little sharply because that was the way the question had been put.