"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 136 - The Pharoah's Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

THE PHAROAH'S GHOST
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright ┬й 2003 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
? Chapter XIV
? Chapter XV
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens

Chapter I
A DOVE, says most dictionaries, is one who is regarded as pure and gentle. The Arabian word for dove
is the word hamamah. And that leads around to the bold-faced fact that whoever named the Arabian
waterboy Hamamah was an awful joker.

Hamamah wasn't really a waterboy. He wasтАФwell, it would go something as follows: You would say,
who is he? Oh, that's Hamamah (the Arabian word for dove) you would be told. And who's Hamamah?
Why, he's the waterboy. This would not be very enlightening, so you might ask for whom he carried
water. Oh, Hamamah didn't carry water any more. But it was true he carried a little blood now and then.

Then your informant would laugh like everything, for no other reason than that there wasn't a thing funny
about it.

In Cairo there were quite a few police officials, native and Colonial, who mentioned Hamamah in their
prayers, asking to be bestowed the privilege of shooting or hanging him legally.

Hamamah wasn't even an Arab by blood. He had come from the south, down in the tall somewhere.
The general consensus was, his father had been a jackal and his mother a handsome snake.

Hamamah had been a handsome boy. But he wasn't handsome now because too many knives and fists
and diseases had worked on his face.

He was a lean cur who skulked in alleys from habit. When he was prosperous, he was a great one to
dress up. He bought the finest that Vowels, the store on Gharb Street in Cairo had to offer, and before
the war he would immediately cable Bonfils, the fine gentleman's tailors on Bond Street in London, for a
new wardrobe. Or he varied that by cabling Farques et Cie, Boulevard Haussman, Paris. They were