"Brian Lumley - Titus Crow 1 - The Burrowers Beneath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Mr Bentham is, as you suggest, "a hoaxer". How do you explain away these eggs?
You think perhaps that Bentham, who appears to be a reasonably down-to-earth
Northeasterner, went down to his workshop and simply put them together, out of
a bucket or two of common-or-garden chrysolite and diamond-dust? No, Henri, it
won't wash. Besides' - he stood up and took one of the things from the box,
weighing it carefully in his hand - 'I've checked them out. So far as I can
determine they're the real thing, all right. In fact I know they are! I've had
little time to test them as fully as I would like to, true, but one thing is
sure - they do defy X-rays! Very strange when you consider that while they're
undeniably heavy there doesn't appear to be any lead in their makeup. And
something else, something far more definite ...'
He put down the egg, neatly stacked the books and papers earlier picked up
from the floor, and returned to his chair. From the centre drawer in his desk
he took a certain surgical instrument. "This was lent to me by a neighbour
friend of mine, that same friend who tried to radiograph the eggs for me. Care
to eavesdrop, de Marigny?'
'A stethoscope?' I took the thing wonderingly from him. 'You mean - ?'
'This was something Sir Amery missed,' Crow cut me off. 'He had the right idea
with his earthquake-detector -I've decided, by the way, to obtain a
seismograph as soon as possible - but he might have tried listening for small
things as well as big ones! But no, that's being unfair, for of course he
didn't know until the end just what his pearly spheres were. In trying the
stethoscope test I was really only following his lead, on a smaller scale.
Well, go on,' he demanded again as I hesitated. 'Listen to them!'
I fitted the receivers to my ears and gingerly touched the sensor to one of
the eggs, then held it there more
firmly. I imagine the rapid change in my expression was that which made Crow
grin in that grim fashion of his. Certainly, in any situation less serious, I
might have expected him to laugh. I was first astounded, then horrified!
'My God!' I said after a moment, a shudder hurrying down my spine. 'There are
-fumblings!'
'Yes,' he answered as I sat there, shaken to my roots, 'there are. The first
stirrings of life, Henri, a life undreamed-of - except, perhaps, by an
unfortunate few -from beyond the dim mists of time and from behind millennia
of myth. A race of creatures unparalleled in zoology or zoological literature,
indeed entirely unknown, except in the most doubtful and obscure tomes. But
they're real, as real as this conversation of ours.'
I felt an abrupt nausea and put the egg quickly back into its box, hurriedly
wiping my hands on a kerchief from my pocket. Then I shakily passed the
stethoscope back across the desk to my friend.
'They have to be destroyed.' My voice cracked a little as I spoke. 'And
without delay!'
'Oh? And how do you think Shudde-M'ell, his brothers and sisters - if indeed
they are bisexual - would react to that?' Crow quietly asked.
'What?' I gasped, as the implications behind his words hit me. 'You mean that
already - '
'Oh, yes.' He anticipated my question. 'The parent creatures know where their
eggs are, all right. They have a system of communication better than anything
we've got, Henri. Telepathy I imagine. That was how those other, earlier eggs
were traced to Sir Amery's cottage on the moors; that was how they were able