"Avram Davidson - The Montavarde Camera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

THE MONTAVARDE CAMERA
AVRAM DAVIDSON
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AVRAM DAVIDSON (1923-1993), like many of the authors included here, wrote in several genres
during his lifetime. Getting his start in speculative fiction in the 1950s, he wrote several classic
stories such as тАЬAll the Seas with Oysters,тАЭ and тАЬThe Golem.тАЭ At the urging of the editor for
Ellery QueenтАЩs Mystery Magazine, he turned to writing mysteries, and won the Ellery Queen as
well as the Edgar Allan Poe Award. When he began writing novels, he went back to the form that
he started in, science fiction and fantasy. Notable works include The Phoenix and the Mirror and
The Island Under the Earth. In тАЬThe Montavarde Camera,тАЭ he combines science and magic with
dangerous results.

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Mr. AzelтАЩs shop was set in between a glazierтАЩs establishment and a woolen draperтАЩs; three short steps
led down to it. The shopfront was narrow; a stranger hurrying by would not even notice it, for the grimy
brick walling of the glazierтАЩs was part of a separate building, and extended farther out.

Three short steps down, and there was a little areaway before the door, and it was always clean,
somehow. The slattern wind blew bits of straw and paper scraps in circles up and down the street,
leaving its discarded playthings scattered all about, but not in the areaway in front of the shop door. Just
above the height of a manтАЩs eye there was a rod fastened to the inside of the door, and from it
descended, in neat folds, a red velveteen curtain. The shopтАЩs window, to the doorтАЩs left, was veiled in the
same way. In old-fashioned lettering the gold-leaf figures of the street number stood alone on the glass
pane.

There was no slot for letters, no name or sign, nothing displayed on door or window. The shop was a
blank, it made no impression on the eye, conveyed no message to brain. If a few of the many people
scurrying by noticed it at all, it was only to assume it was empty.

No cats took advantage of this quiet backwater to doze in the sun, although at least two of them always
reclined under the projecting window of the draper.

On this particular day the pair were jolted out of their calm by the running feet of Mr. Lucius Collins, who
was chasing his hat. It was a high-crowned bowler, a neat and altogether proper hat, and as he chased it
indignantly Mr. Collins puffed and breathed through his mouth тАФ a small, full, red-lipped mouth, grazed
on either side by a pair of well-trimmed, sandy, mutton chop whiskers.

Outrageous! Mr. Collins thought, his stout little legs pumping furiously. Humiliating! And no one to be
blamed for it, either, not even the Government, or the Boers, or Mrs. Collins, she of the sniffles and
rabbity face. Shameful! The gold seals on his watchchain jingled and clashed together and beat against
the stomach it confined, and the wind carried the hat at a rapid clip along the street.

Just as the wind had passed the draperтАЩs, it abruptly abandoned the object of its game, and the forsaken
bowler fell with a thud in front of the next shop. It rolled down the first, the second, and the third step,
and leaned wearily against the door.

Mr. Collins trotted awkwardly down the steps and knelt down to seize the hat. His head remained where
it was, as did his hands and knees. About a foot of uncurtained glass extended from the lower border of