"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 02 - Tales of Midnight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

of mellow exuberance, had given a gift to this Patrick Stranahan.
It would be fine here, but a little bit nervous and testy. Duffey
rather washed that he had gone to stay with his sister and her husband
Bagby. He was astonished now that he hadn't even thought of that, since he
almost always stayed with them when he was in St. Louis.
"But would the mysterious Henri Salvatore be able to find me at the
Bagbys?" Duffey asked himself now. "Well, will he be able to find me at the
Murrays? Why did I think that he would have a better shot at me here? He
didn't say where to be in St. Louis, and this was a fair-sized city."
About twenty minutes later, there was a car and a voice outside,
both of them calling out for Casey. But Duffey got another one of his shocks
from that. He knew that voice, and yet he knew that he had not ever heard it
before. He knew it because he had made it. It was the voice of one of his
creatures. But the voice and the car went away with Casey, and Duffey
forbare to look out.
Duffey phoned his sister. Then he went over to the Bagbys. Murray
said that they would all meet over at the Rounders' Club later. Duffey spent
several hours with the Bagbys. His sister had always been very close to him,
even when he didn't see her for years at a time. But how had Bagby become so
close? This was the one friend on earth who would do anything for him.
Duffey and Bagby seemed to have an infinite number of points of contact.
Later, Duffey and the Bagbys picked up Beth Keegan, Duffey's old St.
Louis girl, and her husband to go to the Rounders'. Beth was named Erlenbaum
now.
"Kerowl, kerowl! the dogs do growl.
The Duffeys have come to town!" Beth chanted when she saw him.
"Where has this doggerel come from, Beth?" Duffey asked her. "What Duffeys?
I have heard this chant before since I have been in town."
"Oh, the Duffeys, the Duffeys, the bright and shining Duffeys! They
are all over town, as lively as a dog blanket full of fleas. You aren't in
with these new Duffeys, Melchisedech. You just haven't their class or color.
You'll see them, you'll see them. There was no way of avoiding them."
"Whence have they their name?" Duffey asked, a little bit
bewildered.
"Oh, from you ultimately, I suppose," Beth said. "They're creatures
of yours, and you are their architect. But I'm afraid they got a little bit
out of hand. You used too much color when you made them, Melchisedech. You
used too much noise. You were working in an unaccustomed medium, I suppose,
but they're badly overdone. Everybody in town loves them. They'd better."
Duffey's sister Mary Louise looked wonderful, but even she was a
little bit overdone. But Bascom Bagby, the baroque, the flawed pearl, the
husband of Mary Louise, the brother-in-law of Duffey, though he also was a
little bit overdone, did not look wonderful. He looked too old for his
chronological age. He looked sick. But he looked more than ever like Duffey.
He had lost some of his bluffery and he seemed very glad to see Duffey,
"probably for the last time", as he said. But he was still a powerful and
humorously rough-looking man, with beetling brows and a beetling belly.
"He was my dark object," Duffey said as he had said before. "He was
my uncleansed stables, he was another part of myself, and I sincerely love
the low freak of a man. He was closer to me than kindred."