"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 160 - Colors For Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The stewardess smiled, moved away with the tray, the glass of water, the two tablets.

Three seats back, a fat male passenger with a soured, pained expression said, “Stewardess! Is that
something for a headache? I have a terrible headache!” He had been back in the men's room twice
already, ill. “Flying always makes me feel lousy,” he complained. “Why don't they build these damned
things so they don't jump around so much?”

The stewardess paused, masking dislike carefully. The fat man had been quarrelsome during the early
part of the trip, for he had come aboard drunk, which was against the rules, and it was probably alcohol
more than flying that was making him ill.

“That something for a headache you got there?” he demanded.

“Aspirin.”

“Gimme,” he said, and bolted the two tablets, drank the water.

He leaned back and, closing his eyes, breathed loudly and deeply for nearly five minutes. Then, suddenly
and blankly, his eyes came open and he made an effort, a terrible, straining effort, to raise his head from
its leaning-back position, to get the head upright on his shoulders. The attempt to accomplish this, despite
the awful concentration which he put into it, was a failure. His loud breathing, which had stopped, did not
resume. He was now dead.



THE two men took Walter with them, Della Nelson thought.

I was not surprised, she reflected. And I am not surprised now. Only very anxious, very unsure.

I knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, so nothing that happened could have been a surprise.
You cannot have a brother without knowing him quite well, knowing him in many respects, probably,
better than he knows himself. Walter's opinions, his desires, the ways he thought, were colored and
twisted by his ambitions, by the many little neurotic threads that all people have.

Walter, for instance, thought himself a good judge of character. He was not. He was, for one thing, too
trustful of others, the reason for this being, she was sure, simply that nothing had yet happened to him in
life to make him wary. Walter was so darned open-hearted and easy with his affections. He liked
everybody.

Something should have happened to Walter in early youth to give him one of those hidden fears the
psychiatrists talk about, something that would make him more cautious, less trustful. If it had, she was
sure Walter would have gone farther, been more successful. As it was, at twenty-eight, Walter was a
darned competent engineer, but he had been unable to advance any farther than field jobs, construction
foreman—little better than common labor. His employers quite frankly thought he was dumb. A big,
amiable, likable young guy who liked everybody, and who unfortunately would trust anyone. Too dumb,
though, for responsibility. It was too bad that a thing like that, the right thing not happening to you when
you were a kid, could thwart your career. For the lack of a kick in the nose when you were young and
tender, you were a big genial guy and they thought you were dumb.

Walter would actually have believed, and his naïveté made her shudder, that all she had to do was take