"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 144 - Strange Fish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Continent. One day a Junkers came over and dropped a random bomb, and it landed practically exactly
on the roof of the building where Sergeant Paris Stevens was greasing an ambulance. When she got out
of the hospital, they presented her with a medical discharge. That had been yesterday; that is, she had
finally been released from what she hoped was the last hospital, yesterday. She was as good as new. Not
very strong, but all together again.

She perched the hat on top of its box where she could look at it, and bounced down on a chaise-lounge.
She should, she thought, make some plans; and the first plan should be for a vacation.

Actually, she would like to have planned a dozen activities, but the doctor had assured her she had no
more strength than the proverbial cat, and she knew he was right. A vacation, then, was the first thing in
order.

But that needn't come for a day or two. First, she'd go to a theater, a good restaurant, and buy some
more clothes.

That night she went to Viville's, the beautiful restaurant on Park in the Fifties and had onion soup made
the way the French weren't making it these days. People came over to her table. Acquaintances. She had
looked forward to this first night on the town. But somehow nothing seemed to strike sparks.

At the theater later, she had the same feeling. Emptiness. Something lacking. She just didn't feel as if she
belonged to anything.

The play, for instance, didn't take hold of her as it should have. Yet it was a good play; the critics had
said it was good, and she knew excellent theater when she saw it. Nothing was touching her, somehow.

She was not pleased, when she went home before midnight, with her first evening on the town. She
noticed a serious look on Abner's face, but its significance didn't touch her then.

And when she entered her apartment, loneliness immediately took her. It was a forlorn feeling. Callahan,
her colored maid, was out tonight. Callahan had a married sister who lived in Harlem, and Callahan spent
her off nights up there. The loneliness wasn't flimsy; it was uncomfortable. It was a dark mood. It was
worse than a mood. Paris couldn't understand it.

I have, she thought, no relatives. Not a living soul that I can call family. I'm a rather attractive vegetable,
but I'm the only one growing in the patch now. They're all dead.

Good God, what's wrong with me tonight? She dropped down on a chair, and tried to laugh at herself.

Then she had an idea. She picked up one of the telephones—the blue one, which was a direct wire to the
room of Abner, the chauffeur, in the garage annex—and got Abner's hoarse voice.

“Abner,” she said. “Why were you looking so gloomy on the way home?”

Abner hesitated, and when he did answer, she knew he was evading. “I'm sorry if I gave that impression,
Miss Paris,” Abner said. “I'm feeling perfectly all right.”

“Cut that out, Abner!” Paris said. “You haven't been able to fool me in years. Now out with it. What's
eating you?”