"Manly Wade Wellman - Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

"Only a quick cup of coffee with Sir Percy Phelps."
"Then here, all ready for you."
She stepped to a table and lifted a silver cover from a chafing dish. Holmes smiled again as he sat
down. "Curried chicken," he said approvingly. "I often say, my dear, that you have as sound a notion of
breakfast as a Scotchwoman."
Happily she served his plate and he ate with good appetite, telling her of what had befallen on Horsell
Common outside Woking.
"How fortunate for Sir Percy that you were there with him," she said. "Only you would have thought to
move so quickly and rescue him. Your mind has never moved with such magnificent speed as in that
moment of danger last night."
"I'll never tell Watson about it," said Holmes, eating chicken. "Sometimes he embarrasses me with his
praise. You never embarrass me with anything, be-cause I love you."
Her blue eyes were wide with worry. "But however did these Martians come here, over those millions
and millions of miles?"
"The press gave us notice of that. Midnight after midnight, a flash of light on Mars like an explosion,
ten of them in all. Each flash propelled a cylinder into space, aimed here to seek us out. The second
cylinder has already arrived, and a third should be here by tonight."
Her hands clasped in admiration, like a girl happy with her first love. "'You are so well-informed of
every-thing. But once Dr. Watson wrote that you know nothing of astronomy."
"Oh, I told Watson that as a joke, in the first days of our acquaintance, but I do my best to learn
something about everything. Only lately I reread Moriarty's Dy-namics of an Asteroid, and found new
stimulation in it."
"Let Dr. Watson think what he will," she said. "I believe that you have truly learned everything
possible."
"Not I," he demurred. "The greatest thing any of us can learn is that we can always learn something
more." He put down his fork and rose. "Yes, Moriarty's study stimulated me, and I am stimulated by
your ex-cellent cooking. Thank you, my dear."
He went quickly down the hall to his own quarters. A letter was stuck in the frame of the door. He
opened it and read:


Friday morning
My dear Holmes,
Nobody, naturally, reflects that these invaders of earth at Woking came prepared to
be violent. If you have planned to join me there, I urge you to stay clear. I might be
killed, and in that case man-kind would doubly need your intelligence, which is not
greatly inferior to my own, to help it in meeting this manifest danger.
Yours truly,
George Edward Challenger


As he finished the letter and put it away, a messenger knocked and gave him a telegram:


MARTIANS UNDER OBSERVATION FROM SAFE POSITIONS WILL FIRE AT
FIRST HOSTILE MOVE
SIR PRETERICK WARING KCB
BRIG COMM
 Through the open window drifted the long-drawn cry of a newsboy. Holmes hurried down and bought
a newspaper. STRANGE REPORT FROM WOKING, said the headline equivocally, and beneath this