"Arthur Porges - Movie Show - A Story for Lincon's Birthday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Porges Arthur)

to work with. That, and a radio. But when it comes to such things, IтАЩm as the brutes
that perish, as the BibleтАФI think тАФputs it.

At first Joel got no sense from the movie. He guessed it was meant to be a
тАЬstoryтАЭ of some kind, but with only a fragment left unburnt, was unable to
reconstruct the plot. By a lucky chance, one of his uncles, a history professor at the
University of Illinois, came to town, was shown the film, and was cautiously
approving of it. He took a dim view of the casting, LincolnтАЩs dialect was overdone,
and his suit neither clean nor well-fitted. He was also put off by all the sweating as
uncalled-for realism. In short, said the professor, a strictly amateur job of
movie-making.

All this increased my own curiosity; I was strangely fascinated by the short
film. I couldnтАЩt see Grain producing it just for fun; it was inconsistent with what Joel
had told me about him; so directly on my return to Chicago I made a point of
researching the trial that the old man had appropriated for his film.

The case was an odd one, well-known to Lincoln scholars. It involved the
alleged murder of Fisher by the three Trailor brothers. The prosecutor was an
ambitious politico named Lamborn. The defense was handled by the firm of Lincoln
and Logan.

Well, there was a good reason for LincolnтАЩs smugness while Lamborn waved
his arms and flung reckless accusations. Fisher wasnтАЩt dead, but just suffering from
amnesia, safe in a doctorтАЩs care, as Lincoln knew well before the trial. So he just let
the prosecutor noose himself, then coolly dropped the gallowsтАЩ trapdoor, breaking
the manтАЩs legal neck, so to speak.

But the Trailor case was not the crux of the matter to me; the film itself was,
so I went back to Springfield and had Joel run it Off again, several times, in fact. I
wondered again how Grain had found so many extras, fitted them out in clothes the
professor admitted were reasonably vintage, and even found an old
courthouseтАФthere are still plenty dating from the 1840sтАФto film in.

It wasnтАЩt until about the fifth showing that I spotted something highly
significant as a clue to the whole mystery. So far, for obvious reasons, IтАЩd hardly
noticed the few objects visible through the dirty windows, but now, running out of
clues, I carefully examined them. There was that huge elm IтАЩve mentioned, a puzzle
in itself; disease has almost eliminated those trees. And, toward the middle of the
movie, some birds fluttered down to alight on its branches. It was very atypical of
me to overlook them all this time, since IтАЩm a longtime birder, a member of the
Audubon Society in good standing. No doubt it was because so much was going on
in the courthouse.

Now there are mighty few birds east of the Rockies I canтАЩt identify at a
glance, but one peek at these shattered my ego. I did a quick, incredulous
double-take. There were about forty of them huddled together on the lower
branches. They resembled ordinary doves, but just didnтАЩt have the right markings.
True, they were not in good focus, and the windows far from clean, as noted, but
any ornithologist worthy of the name, thanks to Roger PetersonтАЩs splendid