"Death Takes Wings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

detectives here before. Nobody tried to kill them.Ф
УThatТs exactly what I told myself. The answer is that IТm not a detective. I
know planes. The men you hired didnТt know them.Ф
УThereТs something in that,Ф admitted Wyatt.
УI told you three I knew planes. That was why somebody decided to kill me.Ф
УIt doesnТt make sense. You didnТt discover anything wrong yesterday,Ф objected
Bracken.
УNo, but somebody figured IТd discover what was wrong soon. It was inevitable.
If I could be killed and my body hidden so that it wouldnТt be discovered right
away, the saboteur figured he would have time to cover his tracks.Ф

YATT drummed with his fingers nervously on a desk.
УWhat did he need time for?Ф
УTo get those blueprints. They were the only real evidence in the case. He tried
getting them this morning and failed. He was going to try again soon. I
suspected then what the trouble was, even though at first it didnТt seem
possible.
УThen came this sabotage of the finished planes. That was the first time
anything as obvious as that had happened. It was clear that somebody wanted us
to find what was wrong with those planes.
УI knew at once that it was a desperate attempt to set me on the wrong track.
That failed too.Ф
УHow was the actual sabotage carried out?Ф Armstrong asked nervously.
УIt was clever. I spoke to some of the workmen in the plant and checked my
suspicions. You three men know that before this fighter plane was accepted by
the army you had to build a model and have it tested. It passed every test. You
got orders to go ahead and build.Ф
УItТs a good plane,Ф stated Wyatt.
УThe first one was. So were the next few models. But those planes were built in
your small experimental plant, a couple of hundred miles from here. And that
plant didnТt have facilities for large-scale production. So you started work
here.
УYour machinists made dies according to plan, your assembly workers put finished
parts together. But the men you had working here hadnТt worked on this plane
before. They didnТt notice that the plans had been changed. You werenТt building
exactly the same plane.Ф
УYouТre crazy.Ф Armstrong snarled.
УLike fun I am! The plane was different. But you couldnТt notice the difference
by looking at it. Slight, very slight changes in the motorЧtiny changes in the
angles at which the wings were set.
УEverything was done to weaken the plane, to make it easy for the motor to fail,
the wings to drop off. You couldnТt tell that anything was wrong no matter how
carefully you inspected it. But that plane was just as much sabotaged as if
somebody had put sugar in the fuel line.Ф
УSomebody substituted different blueprints!Ф Wyatt exclaimed.
УSure. And the beauty of it, from the saboteurТs point of view, was that once
the job was done, it was done for every plane. Every last one was weakened, set
to fail when it got a real test.Ф
УThe change should have been noticed,Ф said Armstrong.
УOnly by somebody who had occasion to study the blueprints. Only by somebody who