"James E. Gunn - The Magicians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

name and just keep the whole thousand.
I convinced myself that taking the assignment was the only proper thing to do. I also was hungry,
and I thought that I could get a good steak for five or six dollars. "Where will I get in touch with you.
Miss-MissтАФ?"
 "Mrs.," she said. "Mrs. Peabody. You won't." She hopped spryly to her feet. "I'll get in touch
with you," I got a final faded-blue flash of twinkling eyes as she swept out the door and was gone. I never
heard the outer door open or close, but by the time I leaped to my feet and reached the door and tore it
open, the outer office was empty. And beyond that the corridor was empty, too. I had wanted to ask her
something. I had wanted to ask the name the man was going under, his alias. Mrs. Peabody had really
hired herself a detective.
CaseyтАФтАФ
"Oh, shut up!" I snarled.
I went back to the desk and studied the bill for a long time. I almost didn't make it to the bank.
The bill was genuine all right.

Chapter 3
Oh! My name is John Wellington Wells,
I'm a dealer in magic and spells.
тАФSir William Gilbert,
The Sorcerer

Solomon. That was his name. So what? It wasn't enough to satisfy Mrs. Peabody. There were lots of
people named Solomon. I knew one myself. Sol the Tailor. But Sol the Tailor had a last name. I didn't
know it, but he'd tell me if I asked him, I'm sure. What's your last name, Sol? So who wants to know?
Just curious. So it's Levi; maybe that makes your day? But already I had the feeling I didn't want to
walk up to this tall, slim man dressed like a magician in a tuxedo and ask him for his last name.
But how do you go around without a last name? You don't go up to a person and say, "I'm
Solomon." Not unless you want the other person to reply, "And I'm the Queen of Sheba."
Somewhere his last name was recorded.
I looked down at the program. It had a shiny black cover. Across the top, in letters dropped out
of the black and then overprinted in red, it said:

THIRTEENTH ANNUAL
COVENTION OF THE MAGI
October 30 and 31

In the middle of the cover, left white, was a seal. It was an odd-looking thing with two concentric
circles enclosing what looked like the plan for an Egyptian burial pyramid. Not the pyramid itself, but the
corridors and hidden chambers and transepts, or whatever they're called. To hide the body and its
treasures from the grave robbers. The scent of the grave, of something musty and rotting, seemed to drift
upward from the program. In the corridors and between the two circles were printed letters in a foreign
alphabet. I thought it was Hebrew.
There was something familiar about the seal. Then I remembered. I looked at my name card. The
same seal.
I leafed through the program quickly looking for names. There weren't any. Usually the officers
are listed somewhere in a program bookletтАФthe president, the program chairman, the people who get
the complaints when things go wrongтАФbut there were no such lists in the booklet. Apparently this was so
close-knit a society that everybody knew everybody else. At least by their first names.
But like all programs this booklet had advertising. There is something about advertising that is
more revealing than all an organization's statements of purpose, as if what someone thinks the members