"073 (B067) - The Freckled Shark (1939-03) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

"Mental trouble," the head doctor said. "Thinks he has to keep that rope around his neck."
"What'll we do about it?"
"Humor him. Let him keep it for a while. The man is in very bad shape, and there's no need of exciting him by taking away his rope. I doubt if he lives."
But Jep Dee did live. He lay on the cot on his back, and during the hours when he was awake, he stared fixedly at things in the room, as if he were trying to see only them, and not something that his mind kept trying to resurrect.
For days, he did not sleep. Sleep-producing drugs seemed to have no effect. And when, finally, he did sleep, a nightmare seemed to come upon him at once and he kept making mewing sounds of horror.
He got better.
"Now," the head doctor said, "we can untie that silly rope from his neck."
Three doctors and a nurse got messed up in this attempt before it came to an end with Jep Dee still in possession of the rope, which he kept tied around his neck. It was a thick rope, and when he slept he kept it coiled neatly on his chest, like a snake.
They had not yet identified Jep Dee.
Off a drinking glass they took his fingerprints, distorted prints, because his fingertips had swollen and festered as a result of the plucked-off nails. They sent these to the Key West police, also to the headquarters of the State police at Tallahassee, and to the department of justice in Washington, and from the latter place they got a telegraphic answer that read:
OUR RECORDS SHOW MAN'S NAME JEP DEE. RECENTLY SENTENCED TO BE SHOT IN CENTRAL AMERICAN REPUBLIC OF BLANCA GRANDE. SAVED BY INTERVENTION OF AMERICAN CONSUL. UNDERSTAND PRESIDENT-DICTATOR OF BLANCA GRANDE HAS STANDING OFFER OF TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-DOLLAR REWARD FOR DEATH OF JEP DEE. IF REWARD OFFER IN ANY WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR PRESENT CONDITION OF JEP DEE, AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO BE INTERESTED BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY NOT ON GOOD TERMS WITH PRESIDENT-DICTATOR OF BLANCA GRANDE.
After this telegram came from the department of justice, they questioned Jep Dee. He could now talk. That is, he had been asking for food and swearing at the doctors.
"Go to hell!" he said.
"If the president-dictator of some South American country ordered you tortured," the doctor said, "they want to know about it in Washington."
"You heard me!" Jep Dee snarled.
"But you should tell—"
"It's none of your damn business," Jep Dee said.
"But—"
"G'wan away!"
"You might at least let us remove that rope—"
"Scram! Vamoose!"
IN the dark and quiet hours of that night, Jep Dee reached under his pillow and got a pair of scissors—small scissors which a nurse had used to snip off his innumerable bandages when dressings were changed and which Jep Dee had stolen and hidden. With the scissors, Jep Dee carefully cut the rope loose from his neck.
He did not cut the knot in the rope. He untied it. With infinite care—and pain too, because of his missing fingernails. The untying took almost an hour. Just before he finished untying it, he listened intently and looked all around, taking great precautions not to be observed.
Twisted between the rope strands, in that part of rope which had been tied in the knot, where it could be discovered only when the rope was untied and untwisted, was a piece of dried shark skin.
The shark skin was freckled.
Whether the shark which was original owner of the skin had been freckled, or whether the freckled aspect of the shark skin came from some other cause, was impossible to ascertain at a glance.
Jep Dee was still quite blind. He fingered the piece of shark skin carefully and caressingly, as if he enjoyed feeling of it.
He did something which no one had heard him do before. He giggled. Not hysterical giggling, nor mad; just the elated chuckle of a man who had put something over.
He got out of the white bed. He was stronger than anyone had thought. He went to the window and dropped the scissors outside, listening carefully to see how far they fell, and by this, concluded that the window was on the first floor. He crawled out, dropped to the ground and felt his way through the grove of palms until he fell over a low hedge, beyond which was a sidewalk.
Jep Dee wore white hospital pajamas. He walked two blocks, feeling his way. Because Key West, Florida, was a winter resort, it was not unusual for people to be seen on the streets in beach pajamas, or suits of slacks that looked very like pajamas. The white hospital pajamas of Jep Dee attracted no attention.
He walked until he heard footsteps approaching, when he stopped and listened. Heavy footsteps. A man's.
Jep Dee said, "I'm not walking in my sleep. I'm a blind man. Will you help me to the post office?"
"The post office is closed at this time of night," reminded the man Jep Dee had met.
"I know," Jep Dee said. "I want you to stop me at a drugstore and loan me a dime for an envelope, a sheet of paper and a stamp."
The man laughed pleasantly, said, "Sure, I'll accommodate you," and took Jep Dee to a drugstore, where he got paper, envelope and stamp, then to the post office.
Jep Dee could write legibly without the aid of his eyes, but it must have been agony without his fingernails. On the paper he scrawled:
SHARK SKIN TELLS EVERTHING
He folded the piece of freckled shark skin inside the paper, inserted it in the envelope, and addressed the missive to:
Miss Rhoda Haven
Tower Apartments
New York City
While Jep Dee was licking the stamps and sticking them on the envelope and putting the envelope in the mail slot—the letter went air mail—the good Samaritan who had led him to the post office went out and called a policeman, because he could see that Jep Dee was the next thing to a dead man, and had no business up and running around. The cop came.
Jep Dee got the idea the cop intended to retrieve the letter which he had mailed, so there was a rousing fight there in the Key West post office, before they got Jep Dee back to the hospital.
News of the mкlйe got to the papers, and a reporter came and took a picture of Jep Dee.
Chapter II. THE WAMPUS-CAT
BY the barest margin, the story—picture included—caught the final edition of the morning newspaper, the one that the newsboys sold on the streets around eight o'clock, to people who were going to work.
However, one newspaper was purchased by a man who did not happen to be going to work. He had been up all night raising hell, as a matter of fact, and was going out to a drugstore—before he went to bed—to buy a box of aspirin, experience having taught him how his head might feel when he awakened.
He looked at the Jep Dee story and forgot all about aspirin.
"Damn!" he croaked.
He put his head back and ran like a pickaninny who had been walking through a lonesome graveyard at dark midnight when he heard a deep groan. He got out in the street and ran, because people were in his way on the sidewalk. He bounded aboard a ritzy, streamlined cabin cruiser moored to one of the yacht docks.