"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 04 - Slave of Sarma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Could the Russians, impossible and incredible as it seemed, somehow have found out about PDX?
Dimension X?


Chapter Three
┬л^┬╗
Richard Blade had never been cut out for the role of rejected suitor. Massive, handsome, steel thewed,
endowed with a superior brain that matched his superb body, he was a man moulded for heroic things.
Yet here he was, lurking in a dark areaway on a day of pouring rain, watching another man marry the girl
he had loved and bedded. Any moment now she would come out of the little church across this quiet
Mayfair street, borne on the triumphant arm of Reginald Smythe-Evans, CPA.
Blade made a bear-like sound in his throat. Reginald Smythe-Evans, indeed! Reggie! Blade spat and
pulled the collar of his trenchcoat tighter against the rain. It was almost obscenely like something out of
P.G. Wodehouse. Reggie was pale, thin, and had spots. And a great deal of money, because Reggie, Sr.
owned the firm.
Yet none of that explained itтАФBlade knew what did. Zoe Cornwall wanted a man around the house.
Operative wordтАФaround. Aman who would be there when wanted, whether for love-making or fixing
things. A man who would not be forced to lie to her, by silence or omission, because the Official Secrets
Act had him trussed like a Christmas goose.
Blade sighed and forgot it. That was over and done with. Zoe was out of his life and he wished her
well with Reggie. There was a job to be done now, duty to be fulfilled, and the wedding of Zoe and
Reggie hadтАФhow she would have hated the ideaтАФset the stage.
If matters went well today, if the trap worked, they would take the fake Richard Blade.
The three of them, J, Lord Leighton, and Blade, had devised the plan during an arduous eighteen
hour session at the house in Prince's Gate.
Blade, peering through gray ropes of rain at the blank gothic arching of church doors, smiled as he
recalled how J had made him recount certain details of his three previous adventures into Dimension X. J
was not a man easily satisfied. For a long time Blade had answered questions about the land of Alb,
about his adventures among the Caths and Mongs in the Jade Mountains, the perils he had faced in the
weird twilight world of Tharn, the strangest of all the X Dimensions into which the computer had sent him.
It was Blade's private opinion that J overdid things at times. His Lordship must have been of the
same opinion and, being His Lordship, did not have to remain quiet about it.
"Don't be such a ruddy ass," he told J. "Who in the bloody hell else could it be? Let us have less
'security,' J, and more creative thinking. How are we going to trap this fake Richard Blade?"
J, sulking a bit, retired with his newly repaired pipe to a chair before the fire. Blade and the old
scientist talked and, half-heartedly, tried to come up with something. Neither tried very hard. Both knew
that in the end it would be J who solved the problem.
And so it was. An hour or so later J had it all worked out. The wedding, the next day, was fortuitous.
What more natural than that a rejected suitor, a little the worse for wear, needing a shave and with
whiskey in him, should hover in the shadows and watch his lost love?
Lord L rubbed his hands in half-contemptuous glee. "Pure Stella Dallas. But it might work."
Now Blade glanced at his watch. A quarter after four.. There was music in the church and massed
shadow play behind the vaulting stained glass. One of the great double doors swung open. Any moment
now the bride and groom would be descending the rain shiny steps to the waiting limousine. Blade took a
step upward from his dark railed area-way so he could look up and down the street.
The driver of the rented bridal limousine was J's man. So was the helmeted, rain caped "Bobby"
making his slow patrol near the church steps. One of J's cars half blocked the end of the narrow street.
The far end was acul de sac.
J himself was one of the guests. He was in the church now. When the throng began to bubble out of
the church, tossing rice and old shoes and generally effusing, J would have to bubble and effuse with