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

"You are thinking of burglars then?" said Dyson, with accent of considerable
interest, "but you must know your neighbour. Are there any suspicious characters
about?"

"Not that I am aware of. But you remember what I told of the sailors."

"Can you trust your servants?"

"Oh, perfectly. The plate is preserved in a strong room; the butler, an old
family servant, alone knows where the key is kept. There is nothing wrong there.
Still, everybody is aware that I have a lot of old silver, and all country folks
are given to gossip. In that way information may have got abroad in very
desirable quarters."

"Yes, but I confess there seems something a little unsatisfactory in the burglar
theory. Who is signalling to whom? I cannot see my way to accepting such an
explanation. What put the plate into your head in connection with these flint
signs, or whatever one may call them?"

"It was the figure of the Bowl," said Vaughan. "I happen to possess a very large
and very valuable Charles II punch-bowl. The chasing is really exquisite, and
the thing is worth a lot of money. The sign I described to you was exactly the
same shape as my punch-bowl."

"A queer coincidence certainly. But the other figures or devices: you have
nothing shaped like a pyramid?"

"Ah, you will think that queerer. As it happens, this bowl of mine, together
with a set of rare old ladles, is kept in a mahogany chest of pyramidal shape.
The four sides slope upwards, they narrow towards the top."

"I confess all this interests me a good deal," said Dyson. Let us go on then.
What about the other figures; how about the Army, as we may call the first sign,
and the Crescent or Half Moon?"

"Ah, there is no reference that I can make out of these two. Still, you see I
have some excuse for curiosity at all events. I would be very vexed to lose any
of the old plate; nearly all the pieces have been in the family for generations.
And I cannot get it out of my head that some scoundrels mean to rob me; and are
communicating with one another every night."

"Frankly," said Dyson, "I can make nothing of it; I am as much in the dark as
yourself. Your theory seems certainly the only possible explanation, and yet the
difficulties are immense."

He leaned back in his chair, and the two men faced each other, frowning, and
perplexed by so bizarre a problem.

"By the way," said Dyson, after a long pause; "what is your geological formation
down there?"