"Charlie Chan - 7405 - The Temple Of The Golden Horde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chan Charlie)

"I see them! Don't let them touch me!" Angela Smith cried.
Chan watched her. She twisted and thrashed as if slimy things were all over her, and her dilated eyes were enormous in the dim temple. Something about her - drugged? Her brain flipped out, a bad trip, seeing demons?
"Miss Smith," Chan urged, "what do you see? Where?"
Her head swung back and forth, thrashing. "No faces! They have no faces! Oh, God, the scroll has been violated! Oh -"
Sedgwick was pale. "Angela! Stop! There are no -"
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!" the girl cried an animal cry, torn from somewhere deep inside her frail body.
The cry - and then she ran! Ran for the open portal of the eerie temple. Suddenly, before Chan or Carleton Sedgwick could move, Angela Smith was at the open portal.
"Quick!" Chan hissed.
They both took a step, and stopped.
The girl had stopped. Frozen. She stared straight ahead at the open portal. Something moved in the shadows of the portal.
The girl stared, silent. She stepped back.
Chan watched the portal.
It came into the temple, an apparition in the skin of some wild animal. It had the head of a great, horned Yak, the tail of a snow tiger, and long streamers of horsehair hanging from its spread arms. A tall staff in one paw hung with the tails of small beasts, a rattle in the other paw that whirred in the silent temple as the apparition swung it in a rapid circle like some aboriginal bull-roarer.
Its mouth opened and a sound came out like the wind sweeping across a vast, bare plain.
Angela Smith stared, suddenly calm, transfixed.


VI

THE APPARITION stepped into the temple, its arms flung wide, its mouth open. "Spirits come free!" The apparition cried in a deep, clear voice in English. "Spirit of the wind! Spirit of the forest! Spirit of the river! Spirit of the blue sky! Enter this child of the great Khan!"
Angela Smith stood immobile, her pale face turned up to the sky of the macabre temple, her whole body now quiet, calm. The apparition - the Mongol Shaman - waved his staff, whirled his rattle, and cried out again. The same words, but in some other language now. A language Chan recognized as Mongolian.
And once more in Mongolian and then again in English - "Oh spirits of the land enter and destroy the demons of the dark! Ride down the wind and sky, trample the evil demons with the thunder of your pony's hooves! Strike them with your sword! Bring the clear blue sky of the great Khan into her body! Release her! Show us a sign of your power!"
Arms wide, the shaman then uttered Mongolian words Chan didn't know. Magical words, meaningless, their meaning lost long ago in the sands of history and time. Magical incantations, repeated over and over as a change came over Angela Smith.
A color seemed to come slowly into her pale face. Her eyes cleared, brightened, almost smiled. Her young lips moved in a silent incantation of her own, and then, slowly, her whole tall body went limp and she sank to her knees with her eyes turned up toward the sky of the dark temple.
She knelt there, calm, breathing easily now, and then her clear eyes turned to the shaman with something that Chan saw was close to love. If not sensual love, then devotion, trust, a deep and quiet peace.
"Now you will rest, child," the shaman said.
Carleton Sedgwick said, "Remarkable, Li! A great power is in you, a power for good."
"No," the shaman said quietly in English now, "the power is in her, in the belief. I am only the instrument through which the believer recognizes his own peace and good."
Then the weird apparition of the shaman reached up and removed the horned Yak head revealing the small, thin face of a Chinese man in his mid-fifties. A deeply lined face, clean-shaven, with burning black eyes that were amazingly gentle despite the obvious fire in them, that turned toward Chan.
"Who is our guest, Carleton?"
Sedgwick nodded to Chan, "He says his name is Chan, a detective from Honolulu. Inspector, this is Li Po, the Khan of The Temple of The Golden Horde."
"Honored," Chan said with a small bow.
The Khan, Li Po, frowned and then suddenly smiled. "Chan? The famous Charlie Chan? It is Li Po who is honored. Our small temple rejoices in such an eminent presence!"
"Fame is a thing of the mist," Chan said. "Your power to exorcise demons of troubled minds is greater than my fleeting honors."
Before Khan Li Po could reply again, there was a liquid, sibilant sound at the portal of the temple. A swishing like some great bird in the night, and a small woman in voluminous, brocaded silk robes seemed to sweep into the temple.
"He must go, Khan! He violates the temple!"
She was a tiny woman, Oriental but not Chinese, with a low, cultured voice. In her early forties, her small, beautiful face was as unlined as the face of a child. Under the stiff robe her tiny body was as slim as a girl. But her almond eyes were not the eyes of a child or of a girl. There was something powerful about her tiny figure, imposing.
"A stranger," she cried, "he pollutes the Temple!"
Chan said, "Are not all men brothers under the blue sky of the great Kahn, Tengri?"
"It is true, Princess," the Khan said. "Tengri is for all."
The Khan's voice had a trance-like gentleness like something from another world. Chan studied the thin leader of the Temple from under hooded eyes. Was the man under some kind of drug? It wasn't unusual for cults to use drugs to heighten their senses, or to tranquilize them into a state of euphoria.
Carleton Sedgwick was also watching the Khan, though trying not to show he was. The tall lawyer had stepped closer to the small, fiery woman who also watched the shaman. Chan had the sudden sensation that the lawyer and the tiny woman were a team, joined together. The woman herself was glaring at the Khan, her tiny foot tapping in a kind of anger.
The Khan, Li Po, seemed to hear the tapping of the woman's foot, and his eyes blinked. He came out of the trance-like state. He nodded to Chan.
"Humble apologies, Inspector Chan, I fail to introduce my wife, this lady before you. I present Madame Li, Snow Princess of The Golden Horde."
Chan bowed to cover his surprise. The tiny woman was the wife of the Khan, and yet...? Had Chan's impression that Madame Li and Sedgwick were, somehow, a team been erroneous? No, he didn't think so. There was something between the tiny woman and the lawyer, something shared, but perhaps, only for the moment. Something about the girl, Angela Smith? He hid behind a smile.
"Such beauty is met with only a few times in a long life," he said.
"Flattery undeserved, but pleasing," Madame Li said. She smiled, bowed, and then looked boldly at Chan. "Yet I must say again that we cannot allow outsiders to invade our peace. You bring alien spirits, Inspector Chan, to disturb our peace."
"Peace is to be prized," Chan said softly, "yet, somehow, peace seems to elude young Angela Smith. She is troubled."
Madame Li shook her tiny head. "Angela has been with us but a short time. Inner peace is not bought quickly in a discount shop. Truth is slow, like the cleaning action of the wind and rain."
She looked toward the tall girl who was still on her knees, calm now, and still looking at the Khan with that sense of love, of total trust, of a kind of sensuality. Madame Li stepped to her, touched her.