"Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Claire Moffatt 01 - Dark Satanic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

Barbara didn't know any such thing, and she had forgotten quite how much Dana's addressing of the older woman as Mom annoyed her, even though it was at the older Mrs. Melford's wish; but after all, she couldn't eject a nightgowned guest at two in the morning. She said, "Well, go back to sleep, Dana. I'm sorry we disturbed you; we'll be quiet getting to bed."
She didn't lie down again. The modest nightgown, buttoned close around her neck and at least five sizes too big for her (evidently one of Mrs. Melford's), gave her the childlike look of a small girl in her mother's clothes. "You're so late, she was worried! Were you in an accident?"
Jamie said, "No, but a friend of ours was taken ill and I had to go to the hospital to identify him, and it's a miserable night for that."
"Yes, I was worried," said the older Mrs. Melford from the doorway. A small, almost frail figure, with hair in a long lank plait down her back and engulfed in a heavy fleece robe of nondescript pink, her face worked with emotion. "Why didn't you call, Jamie? I was seeing you lying dead in the street; I was thinking of calling all the hospitals."
"No, Mother, it's all right, only I just couldn't get to a phone," Jamie said, and Mrs. Melford pursed her lips. "And Barbara couldn't phone either?"
"I was with the man's wife, Mother," Barbara said, hating herself for feeling on the defensive. She felt like a cruel daughter-in-law conspiring to keep an old lady worried.
Dana said, wide-eyed, "I hope the poor man is all right."
"Well, it depends on how you look at it," Jamie said curtly. "He's dead."
"Anyone I know?" Mrs. Melford asked.
"No. One of my writers," Jamie said. "And if you don't mind, I'd like to get to bed. I'm pretty tired, and I do have to work tomorrow."
"I shouldn't have asked Dana to stay," Mrs. Melford said wearily. "It only slows you down on your way to bed, keeps you awake, gets in your wayЕ"
"Oh, Mother," Barbara said impatiently, "nobody minds if you have guests, any time, you know that. Dana's perfectly welcome to stay as long as she wants to. We'll be hospitable in the morning when we're not so tired, that's all." She went into the bedroom, biting her lip, and closed the door, knowing she had lost her temper again and that Jamie was watching his mother's brave effort to look kindly and courageous in the face of his wife's nasty temper. She does it every time, Barbara thought. Then, smiling a little wryly, she began to brush her hair, thinking, If I'm not careful, I'll have delusions of persecution like poor Jock.
She slept badly, her dreams interlaced with Bess Cannon's tragic face and the wild outcries of her accusations, and, waking with a start once, she heard Jamie muttering incoherently in his sleep and knew that he, too, was straggling against nightmares. She woke late, reluctant to face a cold, wretched, gray day and the cheerful face of Dana at the breakfast table in a too-big borrowed housecoat of her mother-in-law. Mrs. Melford, who made a virtue of early rising, was presiding over the electric percolator, and Barbara, for the hundredth time, made the uncharitable comment to herself that this prevented her from breakfasting in privacy with Jamie, and remorsefully reminded herself that after all, the older woman couldn't be expected to break the habits of a lifetime and sleep late just for her, Barbara's, convenience.
She accepted a cup of coffee and asked Dana for the sugar bowl, hoping the matter-of-factness would do in place of hospitality. Jamie came in, scowling, weary, and with a small razor-cut on Ms right cheek.
Mrs. Melford handed him Ms coffee and bent over the back of Ms chair to kiss Ms forehead. "You never did tell me about the poor man last night, Jamie."
"Nothing to tell. He died of a heart attack," Jamie said, "but it may snarl up negotiations for Ms next book, since the contract isn't signed yet. Come to think of it, this is a community-property state, so Bess can sign the contract right away. She can probably use the money for the advance, too. Hell of a note that it should have to go for Jock's funeral, though."
"Anyone whose books I've read, dear?"
"John Cannon. He does popularizations of witchcraft and the like."
Mrs. Melford said, with a shudder, "So unwholesome! Such morbid stuff! Why do you have to publish such things, Jamie?"
"Because they sell damned well," Jamie said with a sigh. "Stick a piece of toast in the toaster for me, will you, Barbara? I'm going to be hellishly late to the office."
Dana was bent over her coffee cup, as if, Barbara thought unkindly, she was going into a trance over it. Why, she asked herself, should Dana look more vampish in an old robe four sizes too big, than she would in a slinky dress and oodles of makeup? I could fight her if she tried looking sexy around Jamie. It would be obvious and I could laugh at it. This way, it seems paranoid when I even think of it.
The telephone rang and Dana seemed to start all over, to come out of her trance with a shudder. Barbara asked, "Is it for you, Dana? Were you expecting a call?"
"What? Oh, no, IЧno, not that I know of," she said, raising a clear untroubled forehead. It rang again, and she said plaintively, "Did you want me to answer it for you, Jamie?"
I'll go." Barbara made a long arm over the kitchen counter for the extension. "James Melford's residence."
"Mrs. Melford? Is Jim there? Can you put him on? It's Wayne," said the young voice at the other end of the line, and Barbara handed the phone to Jamie, "Sounds like trouble at the office, Jamie."
Jamie took the phone. He listened a moment, then said incredulously, "The hell you say," and shook his head. "I'll be right down," be said, and rose precipitately. He said into the phone, on the run, "Did you call the police? Well, why the devil not?" and hung up, striding toward the closet.
"Jamie?" she said, questioningly.
"The office was broken into last night," Jamie said, jerking his coat from the foyer closet and swallowing his coffee in two scalding gulps, "and just one thing seems to be gone."
And before Barbara actually heard the next words, she knew what they would be. She seemed to hear them echoing: "Jock's manuscript."
Chapter Four
The offices of Blackcock Books were not too large to start with, and the addition of two large uniformed policemen crowded Jamie's office to the limit. In the anteroom outside, the book rack had been overturned, and Jamie's secretary was looking at the scattered paperbacks on the floor, obviously itching to pick them up. Evidently the policemen had asked her to leave everything as it was until they had finished their investigation.
Jamie finished going through the material on his desk. Finally he looked up at the policeman. "Nope. Nothing else seems to be missing: just that one manuscript."
"Value?" the policeman asked matter-of-factly.
"That's a hard question, actually. We were intending to pay Cannon three thousand for the paperback rights, which means that if it doesn't turn up or there isn't a carbon copy somewhere in his house, the Cannons have lost that much at least. We hoped, of course, to make a good deal more than that on it; our original print order on a Cannon book is usually something like seventy-five thousand, at seventy-five cents a copy. It's a fairly valuable property, as you can see," Jamie said, but his mind was not on it. He was thinking,
God help us, they meant what they said! They're Чwhoever they are who were trying to scare Jock to deathЧthey're out to stop that book's being published at any cost.
"Do you know anyone who has a grudge against you, Mr. Melford?" the younger patrolmanЧhe was dark and slim, the older one burly and tallЧasked.
"A grudge? Oh." Jamie looked at the savagely slashed blotter on his desk, the torn picture of Barbara, the broken desk-pen set, and ripped-up calendar. He said "Oh, I see. The desk set isn't worth ten dollars, but the idea that anyone would do itЧno, I can't think of anyone. I mean, I don't suppose everyone loves me, especially authors whose manuscripts I have to reject, but mostly people take that in a very professional manner." He bit his lip, wondering if the policeman would think him crazy if he said what he was thinking.
"Can you get in touch with the author, Mr. Melford?"
Jamie shook his head. "Not unless I employ a medium. He died last night. I was there."
The policeman pricked up his ears. He said, "Last night? Have you any reason to suspect foul play, Mr. Melford?"
"Of course not," Jamie said, irritably. "He died of a heart attack, in City Hospital, with half a dozen doctors and the best of care. But it's a nasty coincidence, and
I'm thinkingЕ the grudge may have" been against John Cannon."
"How do you mean that?" the young policeman asked carefully. He wrote something down in his notebook with a ball-point pea.
"He'd been worried," Jamie said slowly, choosing his words, "because someЕ some cranks had been molesting him with phone calls and harassing him, trying to get him to withdraw this book. They had played someЕ some nasty juvenile pranks on him."
"Sounds like malicious mischief," said the policeman, and wrote again.
"Come to think of it, I got one of the calls too," Jamie said slowly, "yesterday."
"Threats? Did the caller use any threats?"
"He certainly did," Jamie said, tight-lipped. "This is a weird one," the policeman said slowly. "Just what sort of threats, Mr. Melford? What did he say?"
"I don't use that kind of language," Jamie said with a glance at his secretary, who was all ears, "but in general he threatened me with all sorts of obscene bodily harm and indicated that I'd be in no condition toЧto raise a family."
The policeman's mouth twitched, either in disgust or nervous embarrassment, and he said, writing it down, "I'll just put down 'threatened mayhem, to wit, castration.' Will that do?"