99 Classic Science-Fiction Short Stories. Айзек Азимов

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СКАЧАТЬ the leader of American Racketeers stood up. What had been silence before, now became the hush of death. The Old Man was going to talk, and everyone wanted to hear what he had to say. It did not take him long to start.

      "You Big Boys have been running the cities before," he growled, "but from tonight on we are going to run the country. Congress and the Supreme Court are going to dance to our music and like it. Our new friend here has promised to deliver the goods, and he does not want much in return. I have told him that we will trade, and what I say goes. Now, you boys listen to Willowby, and remember that I am back of him."

      Then he sat down. As far as the records are concerned, that was the longest speech the Old Man made in his life. The Boys hardly knew what to do; they felt they should applaud, but not being certain remained quiet. Then Willowby stood up.

      "I do not want very much, gentlemen," he remarked. "I only want to be the next President of the United States, and I can be, with your help. Let me show you a picture."

      He walked over to the covered picture, pulled a cord and unveiled it and there, life size, were the Old Man and Willowby shaking hands. Anyone could tell who they were and what they were doing. That brought the house down. Everybody felt that it was time for a little noise. Some of them, who knew the Big Boy well enough, went up and congratulated him on the new political alliance. In the confusion, Winifred Willowby slipped out of the room and no one noticed his absence.

      But some one did notice the sideboard and started to sample the bottles. Soon everyone was drinking a little. But the Old Man did not drink. He just sat there, moodily chewing his cigar and wondering how much of the fifty million he could keep for his share.

      Nobody saw the first rat. It dropped from behind the picture and ran under a chair. The next rat did the same. Perhaps fifty rats were in the room before their presence was noticed. By that time they were coming faster, by the dozen, by the hundred. That was different. One rat in a large room meant nothing. A hundred, five hundred in the same room could mean almost anything.

      And now they were literally pouring out from back of the picture. A cursing man pulled it to the floor and there was a large hole in the wall, two feet in diameter, and out of that hole the rats were pouring, big brown, hungry rats, dropping to the floor and starting to hunt for food. The puzzled men jumped up on top the chairs; the rats stood on their hind legs and looked at the large chunks of food with black beady, binoculars. The Old Man just sat there, chewing his cigar and cursing. He knew what it all meant seconds before anyone else.

      A number of the most fearful men made a dash for the elevator. They were driven back by a torrent of rats climbing up the elevator shaft. Then fear came—and panic. With gun and heel, and broken chairs for clubs, they started in to kill rats, and for every one they killed, a hundred fastened to them with chisel teeth. To make it worse, the lights went out, and they were there in the dark, with mutilation as a beginning and death as an ending, and still the rats poured into the room, up the elevator shaft and out of the hole in the wall.

      The Old Man walked across the room, kicking the struggling bodies of his followers out of his pathway. Rats ran up his legs and tried to bite his hands, his face; he swept them off him as a tiger would wipe ants off his fur; at last he came to the window. There was the city of New York in front of him, the city of a million twinkling lights, the tomb of a billion dead hopes; the Morgue of a Nation, covered by laughing, painted faces. He raised the sash and sat on the sill.

      "Damn Willowby!" he said. "What a fool I was. But I am going to die clean. No rat is going to send me to Hell!"

      And then he dropped.

      In the room the struggle kept on—for an hour and then two. At last the screaming ceased, and the only sound was the gnawing of the rats, the crunching of their teeth and their satisfied, little squeaks of pleasure.

      The next morning Winifred Willowby called on the Chief of the Secret Service of New York. With him were several men from Washington.

      "I want to tell you something," he said. "A large group of men borrowed my office to have a meeting last night. They wanted privacy and secrecy and they had heard of my place in the Empire Trust Building. So I loaned them the entire floor for the night. But my janitors tell me that something terrible happened. An army of rats invaded the place, as they have been doing with other places in the city, and literally ate every man there; that is, all except one, a fellow by the name of Consuelo, and he preferred to jump out of a window and die clean on the pavement."

      "Consuelo?" asked the Chief. "Not the Old Man? Not that Consuelo?"

      "I think that is the one. Here is a list of the men who were there. I thought you might like to look it over before you gave it to the papers."

      The Chief took the list and read it, puzzled.

      "Do you mean these men were there last night?"

      "I understand so."

      "And now they are dead?"

      "I think so. Of course, that is for the coroner to say."

      "Do you know who these men were?"

      "I suppose they were business associates of Consuelo. At least, that is what he told me."

      "They were the hundred biggest gangsters in America. They were the brains of everything vicious in American society. There is not a man there whom we have not been after for years, but we just couldn't pin anything on them. Their death in one night gives the decent people in our country a new lease on life. We can go ahead now and get the little fellows. But, tell me, Mr. Willowby, how did it happen?"

      "I told you. They had a meeting and the rats came. You know there was a rat racket which no one thoroughly understood. Anyway, the rats came—and killed them. No one can tell exactly what did happen, because everyone who was there was killed. That is all. I am sorry that it happened in my office—but I thought I was doing the man a favor to loan him the place for the meeting."

      That night Crawford and Willowby were talking things over. In rushed Rastell and Wilson, brushing the indignant butler aside.

      "We have heard a thousand rumors," began Rastell, "and read as many foolish statements in the papers about the rat tragedy, and we just couldn't wait a minute longer. You just have to tell us what happened. We are not going to leave you till you do."

      "You tell them, Crawford," whispered Willowby. "Whenever I talk about it, my voice becomes squeaky."

      "It happened this way," explained Crawford. "After you started to work, Mr. Willowby decided to go over and study the story of the Piper right in the town of Hamelin. We went there and there was no doubt that the town people really believed that it really happened. They told us all about it, and the more we listened and paid them, the more they told. They gave us the very tune the Piper played to make the rats follow him. It was a simple little thing, and we made some phonograph records of it. It seems that when the rats hear that tune, they want to get as close as they can to the source of the music. Then one old man—he gave us some additional bars which he claimed drove the rats frantic for blood, and we made a record of that also.

      "Afterwards we came back to America and went up into Pike County. Not so many rats there but enough to experiment with. We tried the short tune and the long tune and they worked on the American rats just like they did on the Hamelin ones. We put two and two together and decided that the rat racketeers in New York were using this method of attracting rats. Just put a repeating phonograph in a building and start it playing, and then the rats would come and eat everything to pieces. Of course, we did not know the psychology of it, but I suppose it has something to do with the effect of musical vibrations on the rat's nervous system.

      "Then СКАЧАТЬ