"Smith, Wilbur - Shout At The Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

headache, Sebastian stood up from the bed and, with the skirt of his
nightshirt flapping around his calves, began his third minute search of
the hotel room.

Although the purse had been under his mattress when he went to sleep
the preceding evening, this time Sebastian emptied the water jug and
peered into it hopefully. He unpacked his valise and shook out each
shirt. He crawled under the bed, lifted the coconut matting and probed
every hole in the rotten flooring before giving way to despair.

Shaved, the bed-bug bites on his person anointed with saliva, and
dressed in the grey three-piece suit which was showing signs of travel
fatigue, he brushed his derby hat and placed it carefully over his
curls, picked up his cane in one hand, and lugging his valise in the
other, he went down the stairs into the hot noisy lobby of the Hotel
Royal.

"I say," he greeted the little Arab at the desk with the most cheerful
smile he could muster. (I say, I seem to have lost my money."

A silence fell upon the room. The waiters carrying trays out to the
hotel veranda slowed and stopped, heads turned towards Sebastian with
the same hostile curiosity as if he had announced that he was suffering
from a mild attack of leprosy.

"Stolen, I should imagine," Sebastian went on, grinning.

"Nasty bit of luck, really."

The silence exploded as the bead curtains from the office were thrown
open and the Hindu proprietor erupted into the room with a loud cry of,
"Mr. Oldsmith, what about your bill?"

"Oh, the bill. Yes, well, let's not get excited. I mean, it won't
help, now, will it?"

And the proprietor proceeded to become very excited indeed. His cries
of anguish and indignation carried to the veranda where a dozen persons
were already beginning the daily fight against heat and thirst. They
crowded into the lobby to watch with interest.

Ten days you owe. Nearly one hundred rupees."

"Yes, it's jolly unfortunate, I know." Sebastian was grinning
desperately, when a new voice added itself to the uproar.

"Now just hold on a shake." Together Sebastian and the Hindu turned to
the big red-faced, middle-aged man with the pleasantly mixed American
and Irish accent. "Did I hear you called Mr. Oldsmith?"