"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 30 - Dimension Of Horror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade 30: Dimension of Horror
By Jeffrey Lord

Chapter 1

Ponderously Big Ben tolled midnight. The lean balding man on the couch awoke and sat up in the
semidarkness, tossing off his blanket. He swung his bare feet to the carpeted floor and sat a
moment in his rumpled undershirt and drawers, stretching and gathering strength, trying to shake
off a paralyzing dread that clung to him from a nightmare he only dimly remembered. He had had
many such nightmares in recent weeks.

"Damn," he grumbled. "Bloody nuisance."

The only reply was the muffled murmur of the city.

He stood up and groped toward the shadowy mass of his desk. The telephone rang as he knew it
would. He picked up the receiver.

"Twenty-four hundred hours, sir," came a bored masculine voice. "You wanted to be called . . . "

"Thank you, Peters. Could you have the car brought 'round?"

"Right away, sir. Main entrance or side?"

"Main. No, wait. Make that the side, on Lothbury."

"As you wish, sir."

He hung up and lit his desk lamp.

His craggy face, illuminated from below, was for a moment a ghastly mask of black and white
patterns, a face of unguessable age, the face of a man whose demanding profession had never
allowed him the luxury of growing old. Blinking, sighing and shivering in the muggy cold, he
peered moodily around his barren office cubicle, leaning against his heavy teakwood desk. There
were three chairs: two uncomfortable wooden ones in front of the desk and one comfortable
leather-upholstered one behind the desk, his only self-indulgence. No pictures hung on the wall,
not even a calendar. The tall black filing cabinets were, as-always, locked. The black metal
wastebasket was stuffed with paper that would, as usual, be carefully shredded and burned before
leaving the building.

The two tall arched windows that ordinarily provided a view of Lothbury's congested traffic now
had been transformed by the fog into irregular mirrors that distorted his reflection into a mocking
caricature. Looking at this face that was his, yet not his, he felt the dread returning. He wondered,
Is this a hunch? Should I call the whole thing off? He paid attention to hunches. Because of
hunches, he had outlived nearly all the men he had known in his youth, though his was not a
profession noted for longevity.

"Not this time," he reassured himself out loud. "My deuced imagination is acting up again.
Mustn't let it bowl me over."