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

The office was small and dark. Just big enough for me and a desk and a filing cabinet with one
drawer half full of old file folders and a nearly empty bottle of bourbon. And a chair, now dusty, for
prospective clients. Another office, a bit bigger, was on the other side of the right wall. Outside was a
water cooler, empty, and a desk for a receptionist and typist, unoccupied. Even the typewriter was gone.
The light that came through the dusty window behind me was that peculiar kind of late October
sunlight, pale and a bit spooky, like the sunset over a pumpkin patch, and I sat there, haloed by it,
flipping a quarter over and over. It was my last quarter, and I kept telling myself that if it turned up heads
I would walk out of the office for the last time and go down and spend the quarter for a cup of coffee
and then go to my apartment, get drunk, and tomorrow start looking for some honest work,
But no matter how many times I flipped the quarter, it always came up tails. Finally I let it lie
there on the blotter.
Casey, you're a dope.
"You're telling me."
Private detective! Public sucker! You have as much backbone as a jellyfish. You can be
talked into anything.
"Don't repeat yourself."
Why waste your life teaching? Start living? Get where the money is! Excitement! Glamour!
All you need is a little capital and you can be in business for yourself. Junior partner! Junior
moron!
"I know. I know. What can I say? The trouble is: Suzie agreed with him."
He's gone. She's gone. The money's gone. None of them are coming back. It's time you put
it behind you. Get out of here. Get a job. Start teaching again.
"Where am I going to get a job in the middle of the semester?"
Get a job, then, where you don't need brains. Because you haven't got any.
I was very hard on myself, and a great second-guesser. But I had good reasons. I stared down
at the quarter and thought about a bank account that had been cleaned out and a partner who was in
South America or South Africa or South Dakota, and a girl friend who had disappeared at the same
time, without a note, without a word, and there was no reason to connect them all together except for the
timing but I did. And when I glanced up the little old gray-haired lady was looking lost in the big dusty
chair reserved for prospective clients. It was the one respectable piece of furniture in the office except for
the desk, and that was somewhat marred by heel marks. The chair, of course, was due to be
repossessed any day now.
I must have looked startled. I didn't know how she had got there without my hearing her come in.
"I knocked but you didn't seem to notice," she said.
I doubted that "What can I do for you?" I asked.
Her faded blue eyes twinkled. You read that a lot, but I had never before seen it happen, I
wondered how she did it.
"Before we talk business," she said, "I think I ought to know a little about you." Her face was
crackled like old parchment and concerned and kind. An odor of lavender reached me.
I resisted her charm. "I'm a private detective, lady. You get references from butlers."
"At least you don't get any sass," she said. "This is important to me. I just want to ask a few
questions,"
I sighed. "Okay, lady, ask."
"What did you do before you were a private detective?"
"All private detectives were on the police force," I said. "You learn that from all the detective
novels."
"But not you," she said.
I shrugged. "I taught school. High school."
"What did you teach?"
"English, mostly, but I was versatile. I substituted in history and math."