"Brenchley, Chaz - The Keys To D'esperance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Benchley Chaz)

No lock on the doors, though, no need to struggle with the keys. He climbed
the steps, laid his backpack down, set his shoulder to one of the doors and
pushed.

-------------------

There was rust in the hinges, and it spoke to him: its voice was cold and
harsh, it said "Guilty," and then it squealed with laughter.

He jumped back, sweating, clutched at a column for support and looked out
across the lake again. Saw nothing, no movement, no man.

Stood still, listened; heard the blood hiss and suck in his ears, heard his
heart labour behind his ribs, eventually heard birdsong and the soft
lapping of the lakewater, a more distant rushing which must be the
underground flow to feed and freshen it.

The door stood ajar, silent now, its greeting spoken and its accusation or
its judgement made. He stepped forward and pushed again, and it swung wide
with no sound beyond the grating of rust in its hinges.

-------------------

Not a lodge, then. Surely a folly after all.

He stood in the doorway, and the sun threw his long and slender shadow
across an enamelled iron bath. One of eight, all set in a circle,
radiating; and at the centre a square tiled pit, a plunge-bath large enough
for a dozen men to share.

There was nothing else in the great circular chamber except for wooden slat
benches around the sides, dark with mould and damp. The walls were adorned
with intricate murals, figures from history painted in the Pre-Raphaelite
style, though the light was too dim for him to identify the scenes
portrayed.

A bath-house, he thought, a bathing-house. This vast construction, and it
was only a place to bathe, ensemble or en famille; and that with the lake
outside, just there, wide and deep and surely more attractive...

Perhaps there'd been a club, a bathing-club, the local gentlemen anxious to
preserve their modesty or their ladies' blushes. That or something like it:
nothing else could explain so much labour, so much expense to such
frivolous effect.

But frivolous or not it was here, and so was he. If D'Espщrance could spawn
a structure so large and strange at such a distance, then he thought his
keys could stay where they were, safely in his pack. Something he lacked,
to take him up to the house. He'd settle for this, at least for today. The
child is father to the man; there were lessons here to be learned, aspects