"Bear Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

УInstant mass diagnosis?Ф

УIt takes practice. It also saves time. Who's missing?Ф

УWell." He glanced around. "There's Heissman-Ф

УI've seen him. And Neal Divine. And Lonnie. And Mary Stuart-not that I'd expect her to be here anyway.Ф

"Our beautiful but snooty young Slav, eh?Ф

УI'll go halfway with that. You don't have to be snooty to avoid people!Ф

"I like her too." I looked at him. I'd only spoken to him twice, briefly. I could see he meant what he said. He sighed. I wish she were my leading lady instead of our resident Mata Hari.Ф

УYou can't be referring to the delectable Miss Haynes?Ф

УI can and I am," he said moodily. "Femmes fatales wear me out. You'll observe she's not among those present. I'll bet she's in bed with those two damned floppy-cared hounds of hers, all of them having the vapours and high on smelling salts.Ф

УWho else is missing?Ф

УAntonio." He was smiling again. "According to the Count-he's his cabin-mate-Antonio is in extremis and unlikely to see the night out.Ф

УHe did leave the dining room in rather a hurry." I left Conrad and joined the Count at his table. The Count, with a lean aquiline face, black pencil moustache, bar-straight black eyebrows and greying hair brushed straight back from his forehead appeared to be in more than tolerable health. He held a very large measure of brandy in his hand and I did not have to ask to know that it would be the very best cognac obtainable for the Count was a renowned connoisseur of everything from blondes to caviare, as precisely demanding a perfectionist in the pursuit of the luxuries of life as he was in the performance of his duties which may have helped to make him what he was, the best lighting cameraman in the country and probably in Europe. Nor did I have to wonder where he had obtained the cognac from: rumour had it that he had known Otto Gerran a very long time indeed or at least long enough to bring his own private supplies along with him whenever Otto went on safari. Count Tadeusz Leszczynski-which nobody ever called him because they couldn't pronounce it-had learned a great deal about life since he had parted with his huge Polish estates, precipitately and forever, in mid-September 1939.

"Evening, Count," I said. "At least, you look fit enough.Ф

УТTadeuszТ to my peers. In robust health, I'm glad to say. I take the properly prophylactic precautions." He touched the barely perceptible bulge in his jacket. "You will join me in some prophylaxis? Your penicillins and Aureomycins are but witches" brews for the credulous."

I shook my head. "Duty rounds, I'm afraid. Mr. Gerran wants to know just how ill this weather is making people.Ф

УAh! Our Otto himself is fit?"

"Reasonably.Ф

УOne can't have everything.Ф

УConrad tells me that your roommate Antonio may require a visit.Ф

УWhat Antonio requires is a gag, a strait jacket, and a nursemaid, in that order. Rolling around, sick all over the floor, groaning like some miscreant stretched out on the rack." The Count wrinkled a fastidious nose. "Most upsetting, most."

УI can well imagine it.Ф

УFor a man of delicate sensibilities, you understand.Ф

УOf course."

УI simply had to leave!Ф

УYes. I'll have a look at him." I'd just pushed my chair back to the limit of its securing chain when Michael Stryker sat down in a chair beside me. Stryker, a full partner in Olympus Productions, combined the two jobs, normally separate, of production designer and construction manager Gerran never lost the opportunity to economise. He was a tall, dark, and undeniably handsome man with a clipped moustache and could readily have been mistaken for a matinee idol of the mid- "30s were it not for the fashionably long and untidy hair that obscured about ninety percent of the polo-necked silk sweater which he habitually affected. He looked tough, was unquestionably cynical and, from what little I had heard of him, totally amoral. He was also possessed of the dubious distinction of being Gerran's son-in-law.