"Fritz Leiber - Best of Fritz Leiber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

watched the blisters rise.

He remembered heтАЩd been taught in school what Twenty-Mile Mine also demonstrated: that the earth

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 best of fritz leiber

was fearfully hot under its crust. The crap-table-size hole must pipe up that heat, so that any gambler
taking the Big Dive would fry before heтАЩd fallen a furlong and come out less than a cinder in China.

As if his blistered hand werenтАЩt bad enough, the Big Mushrooms were all hissing at him again and Mr.
Bones had purpled once more and was opening his melon-size mouth to shout for his bouncers.

Once again a lift of the Big GamblerтАЩs hand saved Joe. The whis-pery, gentle voice called, тАЬTell him,
Mr. Bones.тАЭ

The latter roared towards Joe, тАЬNo gambler may pick up the dice he or any other gambler has shot. Only
my dice-girl may do that. Rule of the house!тАЭ

Joe snapped Mr. Bones the barest nod. He said coolly, тАЬRolling a dime less two,тАЭ and when that still
peewee bet was covered, he shot Phoebe for his point and then fooled around for quite a while, throwing
anything but a five or a seven, until the throbbing in his left hand should fade and all his nerves feel rock-
solid again. There had never been the slightest alteration in the power in his right hand; he felt that
strong as ever, or stronger.

Midway of this interlude, the Big Gambler bowed slightly but respectfully towards Joe, hooding those
unfathomable eye sockets, before turning around to take a long black cigarette from his prettiest and
evilest-looking sporting girl. Courtesy in the smallest matters, Joe thought, another mark of the master
devotee of games of chance. The Big Gambler sure had himself a flash crew, all right, though in idly
looking them over again as he rolled, Joe noted one bummer towards the back who didnтАЩt fit inтАФa
raggedly-elegant chap with the elflocked hair and staring eyes and TB-spotted cheeks of a poet.

As he watched the smoke trickling up from under the black slouch hat, he decided that either the lights
across the table had dimmed or else the Big GamblerтАЩs complexion was yet a shade darker than heтАЩd
thought at first. Or it might even beтАФwild fantasyтАФthat the Big GamblerтАЩs skin was slowly darkening
tonight, like a meerschaum pipe being smoked a mile a second. That was almost funny to think ofтАФ
there was enough heat in this place, all right, to darken meerschaum, as Joe knew from sad experience,
but so far as he was aware it was all under the table.

None of JoeтАЩs thoughts, either familiar or admiring, about the Big Gambler decreased in the slightest
degree his certainty of the supreme menace of the man hi black and his conviction that it would be death
to touch him. And if any doubts had stirred in JoeтАЩs mind, they would have been squelched by the
chilling incident which next occurred.

The Big Gambler had just taken into his arms his prettiest-evilest sporting girl and was running an
aristocratic hand across her haunch with perfect gentility, when the poet chap, green-eyed from jealousy
and lovesickness, came leaping forward like a wildcat and aimed a long gleaming dagger at the black
satin back.