"Charlie Chan - 7402 - The SIlent Corpse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

"Okay," said Chan, warming to his companion even more. Like him, the detective had no desire to retrace the seeming miles of dreary passageways they had already traversed. He wanted to learn what the others had found.
Another left turn, and their corridor dead-ended at the inevitable steel door, this one without an inset window and with an orthodox knob. Zachariah paused there briefly, said, "This should bring us back to the others." A pause, then, "Charlie, you've had a good look at the kids. What do you think of Armand?"
"Jury still out, judge on long weekend," said Chan, lapsing into the pidgin he used when he preferred to avoid giving an answer.
Zachariah Burden sighed and shook his head, then grinned and said, "I guess I deserved that. But a father these days needs all the reassurance he can get."
"It's all right," said Chan. "The apologies should be mine. Now, if I may, I have a question that's been bothering me ever since I heard Lionel Burdon committed suicide."
"Charlie -" Zachariah spoke before the detective could ask it "- if you want to know if I know why he did it, the answer is negative. I'm as much in the dark about it as everybody else. And to do it at this time..."
"Why 'this time' - is that significant?"
"Maybe, Charlie, it should have been. Today, he was supposed to invest Dave Wilmot with full voting powers on the family board of directors." Another hesitation, then, "You ought to see the ceremony. It's rather like the investiture of a bishop or a coronation on a very private scale."
With that, again he pushed opened a door and led the way inside with the detective following - into a chamber so brightly lit that it temporarily blinded Chan. There a smell of long-cooled hot metal in the atmosphere, the sharper smell of gunpowder.
From beyond the blur of light, the detective heard somebody cry. "Don't!"
Zachariah let out a cry of alarm and, spinning about, gripped Charlie Chan tightly and flung both of them to a floor that was unexpectedly soft beneath their bodies.
With a shattering series of thunderlike reports, the ten shot clip of a semi-automatic rifle was discharged earsplittingly close and the bullet whined over their heads by less than a foot to thud into a spongy wall.


IV

IN THE CONFUSION, Charlie Chan was quickly aware of only one thing - Zachariah Burdon had led the two of them into the target end of a private shooting gallery at the precise moment that Armand Kent emptied the clip of a semi-automatic rifle at an already well perforated silhouette simulating the upper half of a man's body.
Zachariah sprang to his feet, cursing like the proverbial camel driver of the Sahara caravan routes. What, he wanted to know, was the blankety-blank idea of firing when the rear door through which he and Chan had entered was unlocked? It was, Chan decided, a sound and relevant question under the circumstances.
Armand stood in his firing post, still holding the rifle, looking stunned. It was the vivid dark-haired Carol Burdon, Zachariah's daughter, who volunteered the explanation.
"Zach," she said, "he wasn't shooting at you. We came through the rear door a few minutes ago and somebody must have forgotten to set the lock."
Three of the less conspicuous members of the family search party, all Burdons or Burdon in-laws, stood there and embarrassed. Zachariah, like Chan still dusting himself off, regarded them mordantly.
"This is a helluva time for target practice," Zachariah barked. "We just buried a Burdon, and we're searching for a missing Burdon. Who was the last one inside?" he cried.
A plump, middle-aged man in conventional mourning attire, shuffled his feet and said, "I guess I'm the guilty party, Zach. My God! It never occurred to me that..."
The former Marine colonel spoke to him gently. "Elwood," he said, "in this household, where there's a rule, there's a damned good reason." Then, to Chan, "You all right, Charlie?" His look was anxious.
"Thanks to you," said the detective. He wondered for a moment how his guide had been able to see the bombardment was imminent in the blinding glare of the battery of spotlights beamed from the firing end on the targets. Then he recalled hearing a faint click, just before Zachariah Burdon dumped him, recalled his Marine Corps combat experience and decided his guide had recognized the sound as prelude to the firing of a gun.
Armand handed the weapon sheepishly over to Zachariah, who examined it quickly, then passed it to the detective for inspection, saying, "If that thing had killed us, Charlie, at least we'd have been done in by a Rolls Royce of weapons."
It was a fantastic gun, not new but by no means an antique. It was gas operated, beautiful burnished and balanced, with a telescopic sight by Zeiss. The stock, of magnificently grained walnut wood, was chased with silver. In an oval plaque midway along its right elevation was inscribed in Gothic script the name Reich Marshal Hermann Goering.
Chan said, "It looks like a Mannlicher. But I never saw a gun exactly like this."
"It's unlikely you ever will again," said Zachariah. "Mannlicher made a half dozen for top Nazis in nineteen forty. As far as is known, this is the only one that survived the end of the war."
Chan returned it, remarking, "Bullet kill same dead no matter lineage of gun that fires it."
"Touche," said Zachariah. Then, to Armand, "Just what was the idea of taking target practice now? You were supposed to be looking for Harriet."
The youth's bright brow eyes fell under the former Marine colonel's direct gaze. He shrugged elegantly clad shoulders, replied, "We covered everything except the zone you took with Mr. Chan. When we got here, it seemed like a good idea to let off some steam."
Kent turned to Chan and said in flawless Mandarin Chinese, "Most humble apologies from misdirected self to great detective from Honolulu. No harm intended."
Chan, whose knowledge of the supreme Chinese tongue was slight, was barely able to understand and to reply in far from flawless accents, "Honorable apology most gratefully received and accepted."
Did he detect mockery in the too bright eyes of the elegant young man? Charlie Chan wondered!
When they resumed upstairs, the others had already learned of the near disaster. Lowell Burdon, grave and dignified, expressed formal apology to the detective, who brushed it off politely despite the continuing fluid weakness in the backs of his knees. Chan took advantage of the moment to ask the successor to the chieftainship of the Clan Burdon for a look at the site of Lionel's suicide.
He had expected hesitation, if only on personal grounds, but Lowell Burdon quickly agreed, adding, "You know, Charlie, I still find it hard to believe."
Grave and dignified, he ushered the detective from the living room across a hall into another wing of the huge house, into a large, quietly luxurious library whose walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling and whose center was occupied by a huge desk, a brass and mahogany replica of the George Washington desk in New York's city hall.
Lowell indicated an area of the rich grey carpeting that still bore the faint chalk outlines of the position in which a human figure had lain, markings inevitable to the early investigation of any violent death. "That was where Willis found him."
"Willis?" said Chan. Then, recalling, "Oh, yes, the butler." He was unable entirely to repress an inevitable "the-butler-dunnit" thought but managed not to utter it, mildly cursing his sense of humor.
"It still seems incredible," said Lowell Burton, leaning against the desk. "My first thought was of some incurable illness concealed from the rest of us. But Dr. Smith assured me my brother was probably healthier than I, and I am remarkably healthy for a man of fifty-nine."
Chan could think of nothing to add along those lines, except, "Who heard the shot?"
"No one," Lowell Burdon replied. "But that is not too surprising. This is a huge house and the walls are thick. For instance, nobody up here heard Armand's discharge in the gallery downstairs."
"May I ask what's in there?" Chan nodded toward a door midway in the far wall.
"Of course." Lowell Burdon led them there, opened it to reveal a rectangular chamber with a long ebony table occupying much of its area surrounded by ebony armchairs with red morocco seats and arm covers.
"If this looks like a board of directors' meeting room, that's exactly what it is," Lowell Burdon said. "This is where the formal family conferences are held. And this room is soundproof. It's immediately over the shooting gallery where you and Zachariah had your close call."
"Why the juxtaposition?" asked Chan. "Accident of design?"
"Hardly. My brother did little by accident. It was a matter of practical economics." A thin smile lit his face and he added in an aside, "I know that word sounds odd in connection with this family. But Lionel wanted these two rooms completely proofed for obvious reasons and it made sense to put one on top of another.
"Then, too, when the weather or time did not permit him to play golf, my brother liked to let off steam at the end of a working day by going downstairs and firing a few rounds at target practice." A pause, then, "Running a family empire like ours is not an easy job, a fact that I am increasingly beginning to realize since Lionel - well, since Lionel is gone and left it on my shoulders. At any rate, he found target shooting a release."
"Understandable," said Chan as they moved back toward the living room. "I've done it myself more than once. It steadies taut nerves."