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

copper cup of the ragged blind man standing just beyond its bright Art
Nouveau facade and turned onto the Rue Balbec.
The dusk was deepening. From a sharply slanting tile roof a clutter of
sparrows rose up into the oncoming night. Someone was playing a
mournful tune on a rusty violin in a lamplit parlor up in a thin building on
his left.
Cutting across the cobblestoned street, Harry started through a public
garden. A greened brass plate on the stone column at its entrance
proclaimed it the Jardin Reve.
According to his red-bound Baedeker, the museum he sought was on
the opposite side of this shadowy, block-square little park.
The light was fading faster. Darkness and quiet came closing in on
Harry. He seemed to be the only person walking through the Jardin Reve.
Yet Harry was commencing to feel a shade uneasy, wondering if he really
wasn't alone.
The white gravel path wound through a thick grove of trees. In among
them lurked pale white figures that Harry decided, after reaching into his
coat for his .38 revolver and then thinking better of it, were statues.
 He recognized, quickening his pace, a pudgy Venus and a muscle-bound
Hercules.
Through the dark trees ahead he spotted now the two glowing electric
lamps that framed the arched doorway of the Mus├йe des Antiquit├йs.
From behind him came a rustling sound.
Halting, he spun around. He drew his Colt and stared into the darkness
behind him.
Harry had the impression something large and dark had settled into the
high branches of one of the big trees a few hundred yards away.
He stood still, eyes narrowed and gun ready, watching.
The shape he thought he'd noticed wasn't there. Or if it was, the new
night masked it.
He waited nearly a full minute before holstering his gun and continuing
on his way.
Not quite ten seconds after that a young woman screamed. Two pistol
shots rang out.
Harry dived to the ground, rolled across the grass and came to a
squatting position behind a wide tree trunk. His Colt was once again in
his right hand.
"Well, damn," he remarked aloud.
Rising up above the treetops was an immense birdlike creature. Its
body was nearly man-size and it had bat wings that creaked and made
bellows sounds as it flapped them.
Harry sprinted back to the gravel path for a better look.
Down out of the night sky fell a drop of something hot and sticky. It
splashed him on the cheek.
"Serves me right." He yanked out his pocket handkerchief, wiped at his
face and stuffed the cloth away.
The giant bird or bat or whatever it was was flying away over the
rooftops of Paris. The glow of street lamps and window lights illuminated
it until the creature rose too high. Darkness swallowed it.
Putting away his gun, Harry went trotting back the way he'd come.