A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 3

The militiaman, the young guy in freckles, approached a box and bravely lifted a cover. At the same moment of Tarasovn shouted and ran out on the street. After it also the crowd of curious which jammed into a mill took to the heels. Only authorities remained on a mill. But also they involuntarily started back, having glanced in a box. I approached closer and when uvidat that is in a box, was struck not less the others.

In a box the end of horizontally rotating shaft was concluded. The wheel with the handle is attached to a shaft. A human hand – a live hand! – strong held this handle, and, probably, it rotated a wheel, and together with it and the shaft setting in motion through millstone gear wheels. In an elbow joint the hand was attached to the metal cylinder. This cylinder was connected to the pipe coming to light. Besides, two glass tubules and, apparently, the electric wires leaving a box were inserted into the cylinder it is less. On the same small box the galvanometer and the manometer were established.

Yes, with an ulterior motive Tarasovna so shouted. A strange and terrible impression was made by this working live human hand. Tarasovna, as well as her legendary progenitress Eve, curiosity ruined. Wagner was the same bad expert on female psychology, as well as bible god. Do not tell Wagner Tarasovne what in a box cannot be looked, she would not take an interest in the mechanism setting millstones in motion, quite satisfied with the fact that they spin. But Wagner forbade it to look and it excited insuperable curiosity. And now she learned the terrible truth: its millstones spin with a hand of the dead person!

Authorities were stunned. They did not know how to react to such case which is not provided by the law.

– Citizen! Get out from a box! – the militiaman shouted, assuming that if the hand moves, then she belongs to the living person who, obviously, is hidden in a box. But the hand continued to twirl a wheel, and no citizen appeared.

– There is no place to hide to the person here – the chairman told. – You see, the shoulder in bank is moved, and it is higher than one small box.

– Violation of the code about work – was thoughtfully told by the chairman’s son-in-law, the weigher of the railway station. – Without labor exchange uninsured is employed and, probably. Violation of days of rest and working hours. It is possible to appeal against the resolution.

– Whose hand? – the militiaman asked, having quickened.

– The summer resident my Wagner attached to me. His hand! – Tarasovna answered. – «I – say – to you I will use a mill, only do not look in a box». Unless I knew? Fie! That hands to earn bread by mortuaries? I do not want to work at a devil’s mill!

– And than badly? – the old man with the cunning blinked eyes asked. – It is not necessary to feed, it is not necessary to pay, and works day and night. And to a braid such piece to fit it or, say, to thresh. You lie on the furnace yes you eat kalatches, and it…

– And you be silent! – angrily the militiaman told. – Do not force down. I ask, a hand whose? Perhaps, here the smertoubiystvo occurred. Perhaps to the person the hand was cut off, and he without hand goes now and looks for where a hand.

– Good gracious! – Tarasovna began to wail. – Well, as will come yes here will shout: «Give my hand!»

– Here that and it. It, citizens, not a joke, but a crime under the article of the Criminal code. Where your summer resident Wagner?

– In Moscow. Today has to be.

– Here we will arrest him and we will remove interrogation from it. From where it got a human hand and on what code operates it? To stop a grinding! Illegally.

– Ah, fathers! – again Tarasovna screamed. Now she bitterly regretted the curiosity, and it is even more in what in a temper stirred up about the hand which frightened her. – Unless you will stop it? Shout at it do not shout – will not hear, there are no ears. Twists and twists.

– Well and let twists, and do not fill up grain.

Talking loudly, all left a mill. I remained to look what will be done by Tarasovna. She did not dare to disobey an administration order did not fill up grain in a funnel any more. But she regretted a hand which now in vain a millstone spit or maybe it was a pity for millstones, and Tarasovna stopped work of a hand, having turned a rychazhok on a box.

– You did affairs! – I told Tarasovna, becoming angry about her for the fact that her curiosity and garrulity will give now a lot of trouble to Wagner. I for a minute did not doubt that Wagner did not commit any crime.

– You did! – she answered with irritation. – All mill was befouled! Here and people speak: devil’s mill.

The chairman of the Village Council and the militiaman returned with the press and sealing wax. The militiaman remembered that measures to protection of traces of crime are not taken.

– Ceased to grind? – the militiaman asked.

– Poshabashila – Tarasovna answered.

The chairman set the seal to doors of a box in which there was a hand, and Tarasovna awfully was afraid that the chairman did not burn a mill. But everything was safely. The second seal was set to a mill door.

I met halfway on Wagner Road, intending to warn him about events of day. However my maneuver was not successful. The militiaman called to me and suggested to return. Anything else did not remain to me how to go to a garden and to continue the interrupted reading.

The village worried and hooted as an alarmed beehive. All with impatience expected Wagner’s arrival, and he forced itself to expect long enough. Already began to get dark when the boys guarding on the road cried:

– Goes! Goes!

All hurried on the road. Wagner really drove up to us. But on what crew! Imagine the long office table covered with the cloth which is going down to the earth. Above at the edges «table» is fenced with a board or iron wall of centimeters fifty height. It, obviously, was also that «samobezhka» about which Wagner spoke to me.

Because of the mountain the gray cloud rose. Wind twisted small tornadoes of dust on the road. The rain, long ago zhdanny Tarasovna came.

– Sit down! – Wagner shouted, having seen me. It stopped the extraordinary cart, I jumped and took seat near it. At this time the crowd, predvoditelstvuyemy the chairman of the Village Council, already approached a samobezhka.

– The citizen, climb up, you are arrested! – the chairman told.

Unexpectedly the wind gust lifted the edge of cloth which veiled a samobezhka. Shout of horror swept on crowd, and she started back as if not a light breeze, but the strongest hurricane suddenly struck it. Shrill squeal of Tarasovna covered all voices. Several minutes proceeded this confusion which reason I did not understand.

Wagner quietly looked at crowd, undertook a wheel of management, and… the crowd screamed even more loudly than former again. Samobezhka rose by racks as a horse whom the skilled equestrian forces to turn all the case on hind legs. Then Wagner directed the crew uphill, without paying attention to shouts of crowd, the chairman and the militiaman. The militiaman rushed after, but Wagner translated the speed lever, and the samobezhka with extraordinary ease began to take rise.

The militiaman remained behind, but he did not want to be reconciled with the defeat. He ran after us. To the station was nearby. We went not at a full speed yet. In a few minutes after we passed the station and came out to the highway conducting to Moscow, we heard for ourselves a motorcycle crash. Obviously, the militiaman who got from where the car, decided to continue a pursuit. Wagner smiled.

– Here I will show you all qualities of my samobezhka now.

He continued to drive at the same speed, without paying attention to the approaching persecutor. And when the militiaman already almost overtook for us, Wagner turned… is not present, did not turn, and such bend who is absolutely impossible for the ordinary car made. It suddenly stopped a samobezhka and then somehow moved it all case to the right to the roadside as if the samobezhka could run not only forward, but also sideways. It was made so unexpectedly that the militiaman did not manage to constrain the motorcycle and slipped forward.