"George O. Smith - Stop Look and Dig" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith George O)

I fiddled with the dial for about fifteen minutes, watching the tumblers and the little wheels go around.
Then it went click and I turned the handle and opened the door. I was standing there with both hands
deep in Rambaugh's safe when I heard a noise behind me.


I whirled and slid aside all in one motion and my hand streaked for my armpit and came out with the forty
five. It was a woman and she was carrying nothing more lethal than the fountain pen in her purse. She
blanched when she saw my forty-five swinging towards her middle, but she took a deep breath when I
halted it in midair.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she apologized.

"Startle, hell!" I blurted. "You scared me out of my shoes."

I dug her purse. Beside the usual female junk she had a wallet containing a couple of charge-account
plates, a driver's license, and a hospital card, all made out to Miss Martha Franklin. Miss Franklin was
about twenty-four, and she was a strawberry blonde with the pale skin and blue eyes that goes with the
hair. I gathered that she didn't belong there any more than I did.

"I don't, Mr. Hammond," she said.

So Martha Franklin was a mental sensitive.

"I am," she told me. "That's how I came to be here."

"I'm esper. You'll have to explain in words of one syllable because I can't read you."

"I was not far away when you cut loose with that field-piece of yours," she said flatly. "So I read your
intention to come here. I've been following you at mental range ever since."

"Why?"

"Because there is something in that safe I want very much."

I looked at her again. She did not look the type to get into awkward[pg 057] situations. She colored
slightly and said, "One indiscretion doesn't make a tramp, Mr. Hammond."

I nodded. "Want it intact or burned?" I asked.

"Burned, please," she said, smiling weakly at me for my intention. I smiled back.

On my way to Rambaugh's bedroom I dug the rest of the thug's safe but there wasn't anything there that
would give me an inkling of why he was gunning for me. I came back with one of his needle-rays and
burned the contents of the safe to a black char. I stirred up the ashes with the nose of the needier and
then left it in the safe after wiping it clean on my handkerchief.

"Thank you, Mr. Hammond," she said quietly. "Maybe I can answer your question. Rambaugh was
probably after you because of me."

"Huh?"