"Wilkie Collins - The Evil Genius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Collins Wilkie)

he said; 'write from my dictation, and you shall know what it means. Lift me up
first.' As I did it, he rolled his head to and fro, evidently in pain. But he
managed to point to pen, ink, and paper, on a table hard by, on which his doctor
had been writing. I left him for a moment, to pull the table nearer to the
bed--and in that moment he groaned, and cried out for help. I ran to the room
downstairs where the doctor was waiting. When we got back to him he was in
convulsions. It was all over with Beljames.
"The lawyers who are to defend me have tried to get Experts, as they call them,
to interpret the cipher. The Experts have all failed. They will declare, if they
are called as witnesses, that the signs on the paper are not according to any
known rules, and are marks made at random, meaning nothing.
"As for any statement, on my part, of the confession made to me, the law refuses
to hear it, except from the mouth of a witness. I might prove that the ship's
course was changed, contrary to my directions, after I had gone below to rest,
if I could find the man who was steering at the time. God only knows where that
man is.
"On the other hand, the errors of my past life, and my being in debt, are
circumstances dead against me. The lawyers seem to trust almost entirely in a
famous counsel, whom they have engaged to defend me. For my own part, I go to my
trial with little or no hope.
"If the verdict is guilty, and if you have any regard left for my character,
never rest until you have found somebody who can interpret these cursed signs.
Do for me, I say, what I cannot do for myself. Recover the diamonds; and, when
you restore them, show my owners this letter.
"Kiss the children for me. I wish them, when they are old enough, to read this
defense of myself and to know that their father, who loved them dearly, was an
innocent man. My good brother will take care of you, for my sake. I have done.
RODERICK WESTERFIELD."

Mrs. Westerfield took up the cipher once more. She looked at it as if it were a
living thing that defied her.
"If I am able to read this gibberish," she decided, "I know what I'll do with
the diamonds!"
4.--The Garret.
One year exactly after the fatal day of the trial, Mrs. Westerfield (secluded in
the sanctuary of her bedroom) celebrated her release from the obligation of
wearing widow's weeds.
The conventional graduations in the outward expression of grief, which lead from
black clothing to gray, formed no part of this afflicted lady's system of
mourning. She laid her best blue walking dress and her new bonnet to match on
the bed, and admired them to her heart's content. Her discarded garments were
left on the floor. "Thank Heaven, I've done with you!" she said--and kicked her
rusty mourning out of the way as she advanced to the fireplace to ring the bell.

"Where is my little boy?" she asked, when the landlady entered the room.
"He's down with me in the kitchen, ma'am; I'm teaching him to make a plum cake
for himself. He's so happy! I hope you don't want him just now?"
"Not the least in the world. I want you to take care of him while I am away.
By-the-by, where's Syd?"
The elder child (the girl) had been christened Sydney, in compliment to one of