"Philip Pullman - Dark Materials 02 - The Subtle Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pullman Philip)

He felt for it delicately, listening all the while. The men were moving about downstairs, and Will could
see a dim flicker of light that might have been a flashlight at the edge of the door.
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Then he found the catch of the compartment and clicked it open, and there, just as he'd known it would
be, was the leather writing case.

And now what could he do? He crouched in the dimness, heart pounding, listening hard.

The two men were in the hall downstairs. He heard one of them say quietly, "Come on. I can hear the
milkman down the road."

"It's not here, though," said the other voice. "We'll have to look upstairs."

"Go on, then. Don't hang about."

Will braced himself as he heard the quiet creak of the top step. The man was making no noise at all, but
he couldn't help the creak if he wasn't expecting it. Then there was a pause. A very thin beam of flashlight
swept along the floor outside. Will saw it through the crack.

Then the door began to move. Will waited till the man was framed in the open doorway, and then
exploded up out of the dark and crashed into the intruder's belly.

But neither of them saw the cat.

As the man had reached the top step, Moxie had come silently out of the bedroom and stood with
raised tail just behind the man's legs, ready to rub herself against them. The man, who was trained and fit
and hard, could have dealt with Will, but the cat was in the way, and as the man tried to move back, he
tripped over her. With a sharp gasp he fell backward down the stairs and crashed his head brutally
against the hall table.

Will heard a hideous crack, and didn't stop to wonder about it. Clutching the writing case, he swung
himself down the banister, leaping over the man's body that lay twitching and crumpled at the foot of the
flight, seized the tattered tote bag from the table, and was out of the front door and away before the other
man could do more than come out of the living room and stare.

Even in his fear and haste Will wondered why the other man didn't shout after him, or chase him. They'd
be after him soon, though, with their cars and their cell phones. The only thing to do was run.

He saw the milkman turning into the close, the lights of his electric cart pallid in the dawn glimmer that
was already filling the sky. Will jumped over the fence into the next-door garden, down the passage
beside the house, over the next garden wall, across a dew-wet lawn, through the hedge, and into the
tangle of shrubs and trees between the housing estate and the main road. There he crawled under a bush
and lay panting and trembling. It was too early to be out on the road: wait till later, when the rush hour
started.