"Machen, Arthur - The Shining Pyramid" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machen Arthur)

place before breakfast, and I happened to stop to fill my pipe just by the large
doors in the garden wall. The wood, I must tell you, comes to within a few feet
of the wall, and the track I spoke of runs right in the shadow of the tree I
thought the shelter from a brisk wind that was blowing rather pleasant, and I
stood there smoking with my eyes on the ground. Then something caught my
attention. Just under the wall, on the short grass, a number of small flints
were arranged in a pattern; something like this": and Mr. Vaughan caught at a
pencil and piece of paper, and dotted down a few strokes.

"You see," he went on, "there were, I should think, twelve little stones neatly
arranged in lines, and spaced at equal distances, as I have shewn it on the
paper. They were pointed stones, and the points were very carefully directed one
way."

"Yes," said Dyson, without much interest, "no doubt the children you have
mentioned had been playing there on the way from school. Children, as you know,
are very fond of making such devices with oyster shells or flints or flowers, or
with whatever comes in their way."

"So I thought; I just noticed these flints were arranged in a sort of pattern
and then went on. But the next morning I was taking the same round, which, as a
matter of fact, is habitual with me, and again I saw at the same spot a device
in flints. This time it was really a curious pattern; something like the spokes
of a wheel, all meeting at a common centre, and this centre formed by a device
which looked like a bowl; all, you understand, done in flints."

"You are right," said Dyson, "that seems odd enough. Still it is reasonable that
your half-a-dozen school children are responsible for these fantasies in stone."

"Well, I thought I would set the matter at rest. The children pass the gate
every evening at half-past five, and I walked by at six, and found the device
just as I had left it in the morning. The next day I was up and about at a
quarter to seven, and I found the whole thing had been changed. There was a
pyramid outlined in flints upon the grass. The children I saw going by an hour
and a half later, and they ran past the spot without glancing to right or left.
In the evening I watched them going home, and this morning when I got to the
gate at six o'clock there was a thing like a half moon waiting for me."

"So then the series runs thus: firstly ordered lines, then the device of the
spokes and the bowl, then the pyramid, and finally this morning, the half moon.
That is the order, isn't it?"

"Yes; that is right. But do you know it has made me feel very uneasy? I suppose
it seems absurd, but I can't help thinking that some kind of signalling is going
on under my nose, and that sort of thing is disquieting."

"But what have you to dread? You have no enemies?"

"No; but I have some very valuable old plate."