"A. E. Merritt - Seven Footprints to Satan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

Yet eyes were upon me, intently. I knew it.
The warning had come to me in many places this last fortnight. I had felt the unseen watchers time and
again in the Museum where I had gone to look at the Yunnan jades I had made it possible for rich old
Rockbilt to put there with distinct increase to his reputation as a philanthropist; it had come to me in the
theater and while riding in the Park; in the brokers' offices where I myself had watched the money the
jades had brought me melt swiftly away in a game which I now ruefully admitted I knew less than nothing
about. I had felt it in the streets, and that was to be expected. But I had also felt it at the Club, and that
was not to be expected and it bothered me more than anything else.

Yes, I was under strictest surveillance. But why?

That was what this night I had determined to find out.

At a touch upon my shoulder, I jumped, and swept my hand halfway up to the little automatic under my
left armpit. By that, suddenly I realized how badly the mystery had gotten on my nerves. I turned, and
grinned a bit sheepishly into the face of big Lars Thorwaldsen, back in New York only a few days from
his two years in the Antarctic.

"Bit jerky, aren't you, Jim?" he asked. "What's the matter? Been on a bender?"

"Nothing like it, Lars," I answered. "Too much city, I guess. Too much continual noise and motion. And
too many people," I added with a real candor he could not suspect.

"God!" he exclaimed. "It all looks good to me. I'm eating it up--after those two years. But I suppose in a
month or two I'll be feeling the same way about it. I hear you're going away again soon. Where this time?
Back to China?"

I shook my head. I did not feel like telling Lars that my destination was entirely controlled by whatever
might turn up before I had spent the sixty-five dollars in my wallet and the seven quarters and two dimes
in my pocket.

"Not in trouble, are you, Jim?" he looked at me more keenly. "If you are, I'd be glad to--help you."

I shook my head. Everybody knew that old Rockbilt had been unusually generous about those infernal
jades. I had my pride, and staggered though I was by that amazingly rapid melting away of a golden
deposit I had confidently expected to grow into a barrier against care for the rest of my life, make me, as
a matter of fact, independent of all chance, I did not feel like telling even Lars of my folly. Besides, I was
not yet that hopeless of all things, a beachcomber in New York. Something would turn up.

"Wait," he said, as some one called him back into the Club.

But I did not wait. Even less than baring my unfortunate gamble did I feel like telling about my watchers. I
stepped down into the street.

Who was it that was watching me? And why? Some one from China who had followed after the treasure
I had taken from the ancient tomb? I could not believe it. Kin-Wang, bandit though he might be, and
accomplished graduate of American poker as well as of Cornell, would have sent no spies after me. Our,
well--call it transaction, irregular as it had been, was finished in his mind when he had lost. Crooked as he
might be with the cards, he was not the man to go back on his word. Of that I was sure. Besides, there