"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 22 - Forests of Gleor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

reached his ears. A red flashing light glowed through the storm, then a yellow one.

Blade suddenly realized that he had to get out of here. He'd done what he saw as simple duty. But the
police and the papers would still call him a hero. He would be standing in the full spotlight of publicity for
days or even weeks.

Blade had a cover identity, of course. But could it defend him from all the questions the papers and the
BBC would be asking? Even more important, could it defend every bit of the secret of Project
Dimension X? Blade wondered.

Well, he'd done his duty in one way. Now he had to do it in another. He had lived in the shadows ever
since he joined MI6. It was time to slip away into those shadows again.

Blade scrambled across to a window, kicked a few jagged pieces of glass out of the frame, and
dropped to the ground. He landed heavily on hands and knees, but rose quickly to his feet. He was gone
into the storm before the first motorcycle pulled up beside the wrecked train.

It was another hour before the chief constable for the county appeared. By that time the doctors had
finished sorting the hundred-odd passengers into the dead, the hurt, and the unharmed. The three derailed
cars and the smashed locomotive still sprawled hideously across the landscape. In the gloom and the
falling sleet, the emergency lights made the cars look grotesquely twisted and bloated.

The chief constable's irritation at being dragged out of bed in such grisly weather vanished in a moment.
He hadn't seen anything this bad since the Blitz!

"Good God! What happened?"

The police inspector in charge shook his head. "The Railway people think it may have been ice on the
tracks, so that they hit this curve too fast. But that's only a guess."

"How many-?"

"Twelve so far, and about forty hurt. We've also got a bit of a mystery on our hands."

"Oh? How so?"

"It seems there was this chap who went clambering around one car like a ruddy monkey, giving first-aid
to everyone. The doctors say he saved a good half-dozen lives. But he's nowhere around now."

"Did you get a good description of him?"

"Oh, certainly, sir. Big fellow, over six feet, and heavily built. Dark hair and skin, but dressed like-well,
like a gentleman. A good dozen people would probably be able to recognize him."

The chief constable nodded, considering the mystery. Dash it all, he didn't want to track down a man
who'd apparently been more than a bit of a hero, and who might have some perfectly good reason for
disappearing after he'd done his work! But there was no doubt about it-the mystery man's behavior was
suspicious, and part of the chief constable's job was to follow through on his suspicions.

"Well, I think we'd better get out a 'wanted for questioning' bulletin on this fellow. Also, ring up the Yard