"Ron Goulart - The Curse of the Obelisk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

THE CURSE OF THE
OBELISK
Ron Goulart
Copyright ┬й 1987 by Ron Goulart




CHAPTER 1
Paris in the spring of 1897 was a city of gaiety, light and movement,
pervaded with an air of joyous living. An immense city, full of broad
handsome streets, magnificent buildings, grand open spaces with
fountains and statues, great public gardens and parks, miles and miles of
stores and shops filled with the most beautiful and interesting things that
are made or found in any part of the world.
Harry Challenge didn't much want to be there.
As he went striding along the twilight Boulevard Saint Germain, unlit
cigar clenched in his teeth, he made a list of places he'd rather be.
A lean man of middle height, Harry was dark haired and clean shaven.
His tan, weather-beaten face tended to give people the impression he was
a few years older than his thirty-one years. He wore, as he usually did, a
dark suit. His hat was soft brimmed, and in his snug shoulder holster
rested a Colt .38 revolver.
"Fool's errand," Harry muttered to himself. Not for the first time.
An open carriage rolled by, the horses' hooves clacking on the smooth
pavement. The satin-clad woman in the carriage glanced approvingly at
Harry, and the light of a street lamp made the diamonds in her tiara and
on the collar of her little white Maltese dog sparkle. Scowling, the dog
yapped at Harry.
He tipped his hat to both of them and hurried on.
 The street was crowded. People strolling, people sitting at the little
tables in front of caf├йs, workmen in blue blouses and wooden shoes
heading homeward, even a priest in long black clothes and a broad felt hat
taking the air.
Absently Harry patted the pocket of his vest that contained a folded
copy of the latest cable from his father in New York. The message had
been waiting for him when he checked into his far too fancy Paris hotel
this afternoon. What it said was:
Dear son: Get off your rump. Go see our half-wit client. Name is
Maurice Allegre. He runs the Mus├йe des Antiquit├йs on Rue Balbec. If you
ask me he's got bats in his bonnet, but his money's good. You find out
what's really going on. I doubt his museum is haunted. Your loving
father, the Challenge International Detective Agency.
An earlier message, which had reached Harry while he was finishing up
a case in the capital city of the small sovereign nation of Orlandia had
mentioned a mummy that roamed the museum by night.
Harry'd handled several supernatural cases of late, too many in fact,
and he was hoping M. Allegre would turn out to be, as his father implied,
suffering from hallucinations.
He passed the Caf├й de Flor, dropped a few centimes in the dented