"John Morressy - When Bertie Met Mary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morressy John)

impossible. I distinctly specified a simpleton. Here, see for yourself."
He thrust into my hand a ragged scrap of paper. Though it was in an unfamiliar language, by observing its
unpunctuated abbreviations and compacted syntax I was able to deduce that it had been torn from the
classified advertisement section of a newspaper. I studied it closely and said, "For all I can tell, it may be
a decent position. But I am not here to discuss career opportunities. I've come to warn you. The
townspeople are aroused. They're marching on the castle with torches. They are an ugly mob."
He stepped to the window and studied the encampment through a telescope. "An ugly mob indeed. Look
at that one with the hairy nostrils. The one next to him is no prize, either," he said, passing me the
telescope. I was compelled to agree with his assessment.
"What are you going to do, Doctor Frankenstein?"
He took up his zither and strummed thoughtfully. "For one thing, there will be no more house calls. Oh,
it's 'God bless you, Doctor Frankenstein,' and 'You are a living saint, Doctor Frankenstein,' when their
daughter needs a distemper shot or the son has a stake in his heart. But let one of my creations get loose
and eat a family or two and it's 'To the castle, men!' It's become a local tradition. In warm weather,
they're up here almost every week. I have a full night's work to put out the fires and pass out cider and
doughnuts and get everyone off the grounds, and days before everything is tidied up. And they're always
late paying their bills."
"Why do you work in this drafty old castle, anyway? Wouldn't a nice, modern laboratory be more
suitable?"
With a sly wink, he said, "I bought this place as an investment. A lot of mad scientists and young married
couples are buying castles in the neighborhood. You modernize the plumbing, make the oubliette into a
guest room, and you can double your money in three years."
"That may be so, but it hardly seems right that the great Victor Frankenstein should have to --"
"Victor? You want Victor Frankenstein?" he broke in.
"Yes. Aren't you...?"
He slapped his thigh, gave a hearty laugh, and pointed at me derisively. "Boy, are you lost! You want the
Geneva Frankensteins. Old Vic the Stitch and his family -- the ones who make monsters, right?"
"Then you're not the Doctor Frankenstein who makes monsters out of old odds and ends of corpses?" I
asked, crestfallen.
"I'm Eddie Frankenstein. Want to see my card?"
When I expressed my desire to do so, he drew a small card from his waistcoat pocket. On it was the
unmistakable legend, "Eddie Frankenstein, The Transylvanian Nightingale."
"And you don't make monsters?"
His lips curled in scorn. "I wouldn't touch that line of work with a ten-foot pole. Vic only got into it to
clean his place up."
Observing my perplexity, he explained, "Vic's a surgeon. Does a lot of amputations. That's the big thing in
Geneva these days, amputations. The bits and pieces were piling up, and he hated to throw them
out--he's always been a saver -- so he started stitching the leftovers together into recycled people. It's
tough to put together a good one, though. He gets plenty of arms and legs, but very few heads. Can't do
much without heads."
"So Victor Frankenstein has never succeeded in creating a living monster?"
"Well, he puts them together, but he's not good at needlework and he can't seem to find a reliable power
source. They never make it off the operating table. But he's persistent. I'll give him that."
"And what branch of science do you pursue, Doctor Eddie?"
"Science is only a sideline with me. I prefer to think of myself as a singer. But I dabble in carnivorous
blobs of protoplasm. I've had some success, if I say so myself."
"It seems to make you unpopular with the neighbors," I observed.
Doctor Frankenstein laughed. "Tonight is nothing. You should have seen them when a big one got loose
and ate the local brewery. What a weekend that was!" he reminisced. "First the peasants, with their
torches and shouting and knocking everything over, and when I finally got rid of them...have you ever