"L. Sprague De Camp - The Gnarly Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

Although Dr. Saddler knew perfectly well that the ferocious
apeman would turn out to be an ordinary Caucasian with false hair on
his chest, a streak of whimsicality impelled her to go in. Perhaps,
she thought, she could have some fun with her colleagues about it.
The spieler went through his leather-lunged harangue. Dr.
Saddler guessed from his expression that his feet hurt. The tattooed
lady didn't interest her, as her decorations obviously had no
cultural significance, as they have among the Polynesians. As for the
ancient Mayan, Dr. Saddler thought it in questionable taste to
exhibit a poor microcephalic idiot that way. Professor Yogi's
legerdemain and fireeating weren't bad.
A curtain hung in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage. At the
appropriate moment there were growls and the sound of a length of
chain being slapped against a metal plate. The spieler wound up on a
high note:
o . ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Ungo-Bungo!" The
curtain dropped.
The ape-man was squatting at the back of his cage. He dropped
his chain, got up, and shuffled forward. He grasped two of the bars
and shook them. They were appropriately loose and rattled alarmingly.
Ungo-Bungo snarled at the patrons, showing his even yellow teeth.
Dr. Saddler stared hard. This was something new in the ape-man
line. Ungo-Bungo was about five feet three, but very massive, with
enormous hunched shoulders. Above and below his blue swimming trunks,
thick grizzled hair covered him from crown to ankle. His short stout-
muscled arms ended in big hands with thick gnarled fingers. His neck
projected slightly forward, so that from the front he seemed to have
but little neck at all.
His face- Well, thought Dr. Saddler, she knew all the living
races of men, and all the types of freaks brought about by glandular
maladjustment, and none of them had a face like that. It was deeply
lined. The forehead between the short scalp hair and the brows on the
huge supraorbital ridges receded sharply. The nose, though wide, was
not apelike; it was a shortened version of the thick hooked Armenoid
or "Jewish" nose. The face ended in a long upper lip and a retreating
chin. And the yellowish skin apparently belonged to Ungo-Bungo.
The curtain was whisked up again.
Dr. Saddler went out with the others, but paid another dime,
and soon was back inside. She paid no attention to the spieler, but
got a good position in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage before the rest of
the crowd arrived.
Ungo-Bungo repeated his performance with mechanical precision.
Dr. Saddler noticed that he limped a little as he came forward to
rattle the bars, and that the skin under his mat of hair bore several
big whitish scars. The last joint of his left ring finger was
missing. She noted certain things about the proportions of his shin
and thigh, of his forearm and upper arm, and his big splay feet.
Dr. Saddler paid a third dime. An idea was knocking at her mind
somewhere, trying to get in; either she was crazy or physical
anthropology was haywire or-something. But she knew that if she did