"Avram Davidson - What Strange Stars And Skies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

Miss Mothermer gave a stifled cry, and drew back, but Dame Phillipa, though certainly no less
startled, placed a reassuring hand on her companion's arm, and courteously awaited what this unfortunate
might have to say or to ask. He beckoned, he gestured, he mewled and gibbered. Murmuring to Miss
Mothermer that he evidently stood in need of some assistance, and that they were bound to endeavour to
find what it was, Dame Phillipa stepped forward to follow him. For an instant only Miss Mothermer
hesitated-- but the two larrikins menaced from behind, and she was too fearful for herself and for Dame
Phillipa to allow her to go on alone; perforce she followed. She followed into a door which stood open
as if waiting.
If her testimony (and if one may give so succinct a name to confused and diffused ramblings noted
down by Doctor Hardesty over a period of several months) may be relied on, the door lay but a few
paces into Primrose Alley. The facts, however, are that no such door exists. The upper part of the Alley
contains the tenements officially designated as Gubbinses' Buildings and called, commonly, "the Jakes":
entrance is through a covered archway twenty feet long which divides into two shallow flights of steps
from each of which a hallway leads to the individual apartments. It was in one of these, the window and
not the door of which faced the Alley, that the young parents of Dame Phillipa Garreck's godchild were
lodging. The lower part of the Alley on the same side is occupied by the blind bulk of the back of the old
flour warehouse. The opposite side is lined with the infamous Archways, wherein there are no doors at
all. There are, it is true, two doors of sorts in the warehouse itself, but one is bricked up and the other is
both rusted shut and locked from the inside. A search of the premises via the main gate failed to show
any signs that it had been opened in recent years-- or, indeed, that it could have been.
It was at shortly after one o'clock on the morning of the sixth of November that Lord FitzMorris
Banstock, toiling painfully through Thirza Street in the direction of Devenport Passage, received (or
perhaps I should say, became aware of) an impression that he should retrace his steps and then head
north. There is no need to suggest telepathy and certainly none to mention the supranormal in conjunction
with this impression: Miss Mothermer was most probably blowing the police-whistle, blowing it with lips
which trembled in terror, and so weak and feeble was the sound produced that no police constable had
heard it. On the conscious level of his mind Lord FitzMorris did not hear it, either. But there are sensual
perceptions of which the normal senses are not aware, and it was these, which there can be no doubt that
he (perhaps in compensation, perhaps sharpened by suffering; perhaps both) possesses to an unusual
degree, which heard the sound and translated it. He obeyed the impulse, walking as fast as he could, and
as he walked he was aware of the usual noises and movements in the darkness-- rustlings and shufflings
and whispers, breathings and mutterings-- which betokened the presence of various of Dame Phillipa
Garreck's charges. It seemed to him that they were of a different frequency as he put it to himself,
accustomed to think in wireless radio terms, this night. That they were uncommonly uneasy. It seemed to
him that he could sense their terror.
And as he turned the corner into Salem Yard he saw something glitter, he saw something flash, and he
knew in that instant that it was the famous Negrohead opal, which he had seen that one time before when
his lady cousin occasioned the assistance of the Metropolitan Police to rescue the girl Bessie Lovejoy,
then in process of being purchased for the ill-famed Khowadja of Al-Khebur by the ineffably evil Motilal
Smith.
It glittered and flashed in the cold and the darkness, and then it was gone.
Fenugreek Close is long and narrow and ill-lit, its western and longest extremity (where the Lascar,
Bin-Ali, perished with the cold on the night of St. Sylvester) being a cul-de-sac inhabited-- when it is
inhabited at all-- by Oriental seamen who club together and rent the premises whilst they await a ship.
But there were none such that night. It was there, pressed against the blank and filthy wall, pressing
feebly as if her wren-like little body might obtain entry and safety and sanctuary, sobbing in almost
incoherent terror, that Lord FitzMorris Banstock found the crouching form of Miss Mothermer. The
police-whistle was subsequently discovered by the infamous Archways, and Miss Mothermer has
insisted that, although she would have sounded it, she did not, for (she says) she could not find it;
although she remembers Dame Phillipa pressing it into her hand. On this point she is quite vehement, yet