"Ron Goulart - The Prisoner of Blackwood Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

"She wants to see me after all." Harry folded the note, returned it to the
envelope.
"At the palace?"
"At the Exposition."
Nodding, the magician said, "Good, the ground is much softer
thereabouts. If you get heaved out again, aim for one of the flower beds or
a patch of verdant sward. AlthoughтАФтАЭ He ceased speaking, a look of pain
suddenly spreading across his plump face.
His chair creaked as he sank back, bringing one hand up to press
against his chest.
"What's wrong?" Harry was on his feet.
The magician waved him down. "Nothing, my boy, not a thing." His
voice was a bit dim and throaty. He coughed into his hand before
continuing. "I keep forgetting I am but a stage illusionist and not a true
magician."
Settling back into his chair, Harry slipped the pale blue envelope into
the breast pocket of his coat. "You saw something?"
 "Nothing at all, no," said the Great Lorenzo. "I have to keep reminding
myself I can't really see the future and that these occasional flashes, these
unbidden peeks ahead, mean absolutely nothing. Merely, no doubt, the
result of mixing eclairs stuffed with clotted cream and rather inferior
brandy."
"Your latest vision had something to do with me?"
With a slow sigh his portly friend answered, "If you must know, my boy,
I saw you stretched out upon a floor of black and white mosaic tiles. That
assignation invitation was clutched in your hand, and there was a
handsome sword of some sort thrust into you in the vicinity of your
heart."
"Vivid," said Harry, exhaling smoke.
"As I say, not at all a dependable glimpse ahead," the magician assured
him. "Don't let me spoil your evening, my boy."
Harry grinned. "Why would your predicting my death spoil my fun?"
"Even so," the Great Lorenzo said, "it wouldn't hurt to be as careful as
you can this evening."


CHAPTER 2
The weather changed a few minutes shy of eleven that evening. A fine,
misty rain began to fall, and the thousands of lights of the Exposition
grounds became faintly blurred. The music and laughter and the babble of
hundreds of excited conversations seemed suddenly muffled, too.
Harry was making his way through the crowd circling the main
fountain when the rain started. The two arched dolphins were spouting
streamers of purple water, the single naked water nymph was spilling a
cascade of gold from her tilted horn of plenty. Cutting through a flower
garden and then double-timing along a path of slick white gravel, Harry
reached the Streets of Cairo Exhibit just in time almost to collide with a
plump matron riding one of the fair's hundred and some white burros.
"Please, whatever you do, don't annoy the brute," the gray-haired
Englishwoman pleaded. "Whenever he becomes annoyed, I tumble off."