Eye in the Sky (1957) Read Online Free PDF

did she.

    * * * * *

    They were
driven home by a staff physician, along with
the severe young businesswoman. She, too, wore a plain hospital smock.
The three of them sat quietly in the back seat, as the Packard jitney made its
way along the dark streets of Belmont.
    “They
think I’ve got a couple of cracked ribs,” the woman told them dispassionately. Presently, she added, “My name’s
Joan Reiss. I’ve seen both of you before … you’ve been in my
store.”
    “What
store is that?” Hamilton asked, after he had sketchily introduced himself and his wife.
    “The
book and art supply shop on El Camino. Last August
you bought a Skira folio of Chagall.”
    “That’s
so,” Marsha admitted. “It was Jack’s birthday … we put them up
on the wall. Downstairs, in the audiophile
room.”
    “The cellar,” Hamilton explained.
    “There
was one thing,” Marsha said suddenly, her fingers digging convulsively
into her purse. “Did you notice the
doctor?”
    “Notice?”
He was puzzled. “No, not particularly.”
    “That’s what I mean. He was just sort of—well, a blob. Like doctors you see in toothpaste ads.”
    Joan Reiss was listening intently. “What’s this?”
    “Nothing,” Hamilton told her shortly. “A private con versation.”
    “And the nurse. She was the same, a sort of composite. Like all the nurses you ever saw.”
    Pondering, Hamilton gazed out the car window at the night. “It’s the result of mass communication,” he
con jectured. “People model themselves
after ads. Don’t they, Miss
Reiss?”
    Miss Reiss said, “I wanted to ask you something. There was something I noticed that made me wonder.”
    “What’s that?” Hamilton asked suspiciously; Miss Reiss couldn’t possibly know what they were
talking about.
    “The
policeman on the platform … just before it collapsed. Why was he there?”
    “He came with us,” Hamilton said, annoyed.
    Miss Reiss eyed him intently. “Did he? I thought per haps …” Her voice trailed off vaguely. “It
seemed to me that he turned and started back just before it fell.”
    “He
did,” Hamilton agreed. “He felt it going. So did I, but I hurried the
other way.”
    “You
mean you deliberately came back? When you could have saved yourself?”
    “My wife,” Hamilton told her testily.
    Miss Reiss
nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’m sorry … all this shock and strain. We were fortunate. Some weren’t. Isn’t it odd: some
of us got out with almost no injuries, and
that poor soldier, Mr. Silvester, with a broken back. It makes you
wonder.”
    “I
meant to tell you,” the physician driving the car spoke up. “Arthur Silvester doesn’t have a broken spinal column.
It seems to be a chipped vertebra and a dam aged
spleen.”
    “Great,”
Hamilton muttered. “What about the guide? Nobody’s mentioned him.”
    “Some internal injuries,” the physician answered. “They haven’t released the diagnosis yet.”
    “Is he waiting out in the supply shack?” Marsha asked.
    The doctor
laughed. “You mean Bill Laws? He was the first one they carted out; he’s
got friends on the staff.”
    “And another thing,” Marsha said abruptly. “Considering
how far we fell and all that radiation—none of us was really hurt. Here the
three of us are running around again as if nothing had happened. It’s unreal.
It was too easy.”
    Exasperated, Hamilton said, “We probably fell into a bunch of safety gadgets. Goddam it—”
    There was
more he wanted to say, but he never got it
out. At that moment, a stark, fierce pain lashed up his right leg. With
a yell, he leaped up, banging his head on the roof of the car. Pawing
frantically, he yanked up his trouser leg
in time to see asmall, winged creature scuttle off.
    “What is it?” Marsha demand anxiously. And then she, too, saw it. “A bee!”
    Furiously,
Hamilton stepped on the bee, grinding it under
his shoe. “It stung me. Right on the calf.” Already, an ugly
red swelling was taking shape.