"Hiding Place" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

there was no indication that a record or a tape recording wouldn't rot before it
was found and played.
They had decided not to go to the school authorities about the forged
information that Burroughs had sent. There was nothing to be gained by getting
him thrown out, so that he'd have to leave town. Better to keep him here, where
he'd be under constant observation.
But Bales did go to the school to learn a few things.
Burroughs was a good teacher. He took his kids from the beginning of Julius
Caesar to the middle of the book, and then shifted them to something tougher and
more interesting. He wasn't the pally type, but the kids liked him anyway, and
even learned some Latin. Forged data or not, the school board was getting its
moneys worth.
Bales took a look at one of the textbooks, the pages of the first half grimy,
where the kids had ploughed through them, those of the second half nice and
clean. It was put out by some publishing company he had never heard of. The
editor was Virgil K. Stuart, Head of the Latin Department at some jerkwater high
schoolЧ
Excitement quickened through him. Wait a minute, that was the high school where
Burroughs had taught. Vigil K. Stuart must have been his pal. But Virgil had
never finished the text. What was it Ridley had said? He had dropped dead just
before knocking off the last page. And yet here the thing was, neatly printed
and already in use. Who had finished that last page? Burroughs?
Way back in his own high school days, Bales had gone through most of Caesar's
Commentaries himself, and outside of Gaul being divided into three parts, he
didn't remember a thing about it. What he remembered about Latin he could have
put in a pig's eye.
But this was, you might say, a mental hiding placeЧa hiding place open to public
view, too open to be suspected. He picked up a copy of the book and a Latin
dictionary, and began to fight his way through Caesar's Gallic wars ...
Bales was back at the man's apartment once more. Burroughs said, "What do you
want to talk about this time?"
"The strange customs of the Germanic tribes Caesar fought," said Bales. "The
peculiar medicines they used."
Burroughs' breath came faster. He said, "You've found it."
"Sure I've found it. You expected it to be found some day, didn't you? And after
the hint you gave me, it wasn't so hard."
Burroughs must have made some signal. The dog padded in and stood there looking
at the two men.
"Put your dog at ease," said Bales. "We've got some talking to do."
"What about?" asked Burroughs.
"How clever you are. And how stupid I am. It was clever, Burroughs, to choose
that kind of hiding place. You finished Stuart's book, didn't you?"
"It was a labor of friendship."
"It was more than that. It gave you the chance to insert your pretty little
formula in Latin right in the middle of Caesar's Roman gobbledygook. You knew
what a Latin class was like. You knew that all the kids did when they translated
was use words."
"They never expect to make sense out of Caesar," said Burroughs.
"Of course not. So when the kids came to your formula, they could translate it
word for word, and not expect to understand it any more than they understood