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

He let this last sink in, then continued: 'Anyhow, this Coalville . . .
expedition, if you like, arrived beneath Harden on or about the twenty-sixth
of the month, causing that collapse of the mine which Bentham commented upon.
There, discovering the eggs to be missing, "abducted", I suppose you could
say, the creatures picked up the mental trail towards Bentham's place at
Alston.'
He paused here to sort out a newspaper cutting from a small pile on his desk
and passed it across for my
inspection. 'As you can see, Henri, there were tremors at Stenhope, County
Durham, on the twenty-eighth. Need I point out that Stenhope lies directly
between Harden and Alston?'
I flopped down again in my chair and helped myself liberally to Crow's brandy.
'Titus, it's plain you can't keep the eggs here!' I told him. 'Heavens, why
even now - unseen, unheard, except perhaps as deep tremors on some
meteorologist's machinery - these underground octopuses, these subterranean
vampires might be on their way here, burning their way through the bowels of
the earth! You've put yourself in as much danger as Bentham before he sent you
the eggs!'
Then, suddenly, I had an idea. I leaned forward to thump the table. 'The sea!'
I cried.
Crow appeared startled by my outburst. 'Eh?' he asked. 'What do you mean, "the
sea", de Marigny?'
'Why, that's it!' I slapped a clenched fist into the palm of my hand. 'No need
to destroy the eggs and risk the revenge of the adult creatures - simply take
them out to sea and drop them overboard! Didn't Sir Amery say that they fear
water?'
'It's an idea,' Crow slowly answered, 'and yet - '
'Well?'
'Well, I had it in my mind to use the eggs differently, Henri. To use them
more constructively, I mean.'
'Use them?'
'We have to put a stop to Shudde-M'ell once and for all, my friend, and we
have the key right here in our hands!' He tapped the box with a fingernail.
'If only I could conceive a plan, a system that might work, discover a way to
put paid to the things for good. But for that I need time, which means hanging
on to the eggs, and that in turn means -' ' 'Titus, wait,' I rudely
interrupted, holding up my hands.
There was something in the back of my mind, something demanding concentration.
Abruptly it came to me and I snapped my fingers. 'Of course! I knew there was
something bothering me. Now, correct me if I go wrong, but surely we've
decided that this Shudde-M'ell creature and his kind feature in the Cthulhu
Cycle?'
'Yes.' My friend nodded, obviously at a loss to decide what 1 was getting at.
'It's simply this,' I said. 'How come these creatures aren't prisoned, as
their hideous brothers and cousins were in the mythology by the Elder Gods
untold millions of years ago?'
I had a point. Crow frowned, quickly moving out from his desk and crossing the
room to take from a bookshelf his copy of Feery's Notes on the Necronomicon.
'This will do for now,' he said, 'at least until I can get it fixed for you to
check through the Necronomicon itself at the British Museum. And this time