"MacLean, Alistair - The Way to Dusty Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

Harlow turned and walked away as if the matter was settled. Both Mary and Rory watched him go, the former with dull misery in her eyes, the latter with a mixture of triumph and contempt at which he was at no pains at all to conceal. MacAlpine hesitated, made as if to speak, then he too turned and walked away, although in a different direction. Dunnet accompanied him. The two men halted in a corner of the pits.

MacAlpine said: "Well?"

Dunnet said: Well what, James?"

"Please. I don't deserve that from you."

"You mean, did I see what you saw? His hands?"

Tie's got the shakes again." MacAlpine made a long pause then sighed and shook his head. "I keep on saying it. It happens to them all. No matter how cool or brave or brilliant -- hell, I've said it all before. And when a man has icy calm and iron control like Johnny -- well, when the break comes it's liable to be a pretty drastic one."

"And when does the break come?"

"Pretty soon, I think. I'll give him one more Grand Prix. Do you know what he's going to do now? Later tonight, rather-he's become very crafty about it."

"I don't think I want to know."

"He's going to hit the bottle."

A voice with a very powerful Glasgow accent said: the word is that he already has."

Both MacAlpine and Dunnet turned slowly round. Coming out of the shadows of the hut behind was a small man with an incredibly wizened face, whose straggling white moustache contrasted oddly with his monk's tonsure. Even odder was the long, thin and remarkably bent black cigar protruding from one corner of his virtually toothless mouth. His name was Henry, he was the transporter's old driver -- long long past retiring age -- and the cigar was his trademark. It was said that he occasionally ate with the cigar in his mouth.

MacAlpine said without inflection: "Eavesdropping, eh?"

"Eavesdropping! "It was difficult to say whether Henry's tone and expression reflected indignation or incredulity but in either event they were on an Olympian scale. "You know very well that I would never eavesdrop, Mr. MacAlpine. I was just listening. There's a difference."

"What did you say just now?"

"I know you heard what I said." Henry was still splendidly unperturbed. "You know that he's driving like a madman and that all the other drivers are getting terrified of him. In fact, they are terrified of him. He shouldn't be allowed on a race-track again. The man's shot, you can see that. And in Glasgow, when we say that a man's shot, we mean--"

Dunnet said: "We know what you mean. I thought you were a friend of his, Henry?"

"Aye, I'm all that. Finest gentleman I've ever known, begging the pardon of you two gentlemen. It's because I'm his friend that I don't want him killed - or had up for manslaughter."

MacAlpine said without animosity: "You stick to your job of running the transporter, Henry: I'll stick to mine of running the Coronado team."

Henry nodded and turned away, gravity in his face and a certain carefully controlled degree of outrage in his walk as if to say he'd done his duty, delivered his witch's warning and if that warning were not acted upon the consequences weren't going to be his, Henry's, fault. MacAlpine, his face equally grave, rubbed his cheek thoughtfully and said: "He could be right at that. In fact, I have every reason for thinking he is."

"Is what, James?"

"On the skids. On the rocks. Shot, as Henry would say."

"shot by whom? By what?"

"Chap called Bacchus, Alexis. The chap that prefers using booze to bullets."

"You have evidence of this?"