"Colin Wilson - Spiderworld 05 - The Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

Dravig asked: "What is it?" Niall held out the disc, and the spider took it in his
claw.
Niall said: "It was in the hole. It must have been there when the tree was planted."
"Does it mean anything to you?"
"No."
 The spider dropped it; Niall picked it up. "I'll take it with me. I'd like to find out
what it is."
It was too heavy for the pocket of his mantle, so he placed it beside the doorway.
Dravig was looking among the bushes. Niall pointed to the rope tied round the
base of the stunted tree.
"This is the other end of the rope they used. Someone must have cut it as Skorbo
came out of the doorway."
Whatever had been used to cut the rope -- either an ax or a knife -- had been
razor-sharp; there were no frayed ends.
Dravig asked: "Have you any more observations?"
Niall considered. He allowed himself to remain silent for a long time, aware that
the patience of spiders is far greater than that of human beings. He said finally: "Whoever
did this planned it carefully. In my opinion there must have been at least three of them.
And for some reason they hated Skorbo."
"You believe that Skorbo was the intended victim?"
"I am inclined to think so." Niall decided against explaining why Skorbo was
disliked; it would have seemed discourtesy toward the dead. And Dravig, who sensed that
Niall had more to say, was too tactful to press him.
Niall said: "They probably entered by the front door. But they did not leave by it.
They had propped it closed with a balk of timber. That means they must have climbed
over the wall. . . Ah yes."
He had pushed himself through the gap between the bushes and the left-hand wall,
and now found a low gate in the wall. It was made of iron, and was rusted. Yet when he
pushed it, the gate swung upon its hinges without a creak. A glance at these hinges
showed that they had been greased.
The gate led into a narrow lane, which ran between two garden walls. It had
obviously been constructed to afford entrance into the gardens, and a few yards from the
gate, it terminated in the wall of the house. In the other direction, it ran on for about a
hundred yards before it was blocked with rubble where a wall had collapsed.
Dravig had found it easier to step over the wall than to squeeze his bulk through
the gate; now he stood beside Niall in the snow-covered lane. Any footprints that had
been left behind had been obliterated by the more recent snowfall. Both stood there
silently; Niall had discovered that being with a spider placed him in a calm and
contemplative frame of mind, and that this sharpened his powers of intuition. So far his
mind had been full of questions and observations, and this made him abnormally aware
of his physical surroundings, as if they were thrusting themselves insistently against his
senses. Now, quite suddenly, he relaxed, and it was as if the physical world had receded.
The discomfort of his cold hands and feet became irrelevant, as if they belonged to
someone else. In this new silence, he experienced a kind of awakening of attention, as if
some unusual sound or smell was hovering on the edge of his perceptions. As he stood
there, totally relaxed, it became stronger. There was something unpleasant about it,
something distinctly menacing.
Dravig also stood motionless, without a hint of impatience; yet Niall's contact
with his mind told him that the spider was completely oblivious to this sense of