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

good, too. Both firms had Hamamah's measurements on file.

At ten o'clock this morning, Hamamah was particularly well-dressed. He strolled out of his hotel, the
Zaibaq Mansion, a shifty dive on Mi'za Street in full glory from dust gray bowler to striped morning
trousers.

He gave old Amil, the doorman at the Zaibaq Mansion, a one-hundred piastre note. It was equivalent to
a little less than five dollars, American, in normal times.

тАЬFor you, my dear father,тАЭ said Hamamah grandly.

тАЬThank you, my loving son,тАЭ said old Amil.

Hamamah strolled up the street.

Old Amil smiled benignly until Hamamah was out of sight.

Then old Amil spat on the hundred-piastre note. He wiped the spit off as if that cleaned it. Old Amil took
a knife, a frightening knife with a blade like fourteen inches of needle, and stuck it through the note. He
stood there looking at it and thinking how fine it would be if that was Hamamah's heart impaled on the
sticker. Two years ago Hamamah had gone off on a honeymoon with old Amil's daughter, and old Amil
was fairly sure Hamamah had sold the girl to the slave market on the edge of the great and mysterious
country which was labeled Rub Al Khali on the maps. For two years old Amil had been planning to kill
Hamamah, and the only reason he hadn't done it was because he was hoping he could figure out a still
more painful and gruesome way of doing it.

At that, old Amil was probably as good a friend as Hamamah had.

Hamamah was anybody's snake. He could be bought. He usually was.



HAMAMAH discovered the American sucker in front of the Mosque, the big one north of the cluster of
shops on Gharb Street where they sell camel trappings.

The American sap was a long drink of water decked out in a forty-dollar New York suit and a splintering
new sun helmet. He had yap written all over him. He even carried some of the junk jewelry the camel
boys hawked to the fool tourists as a sideline.

Hamamah, who had nothing else to do, decided to clip this guy.

There were no regular Yankee tourists these days, what with the war. There were plenty of soldiers,
American and English, who could be shystered, but the trouble with them was that they had the habit of
beating the hell out of a poor hard working thief when they caught one.

This one was perfect. He was thin and pale-looking, and Hamamah catalogued him as a dopey American
clerk sent over here by some Yankee company handling war material.

Hamamah walked up to the sucker with another hundred-piastre note in his hand.