"Wilson, Richard - Transitory Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Richard)

TRANSITORY ISLAND
by Richard Wilson
(Author of "Murder From Mars," "The Missing Sea-Serpent," etc.)
When three men are alone on a barren island in the middle of nowhere, how can
two of them disappear without a trace?



DOUG PELTON CHUCKED a valueless penny into the Pacific and laughed grimly. He
was remembering a questionnaire he had answered ten years ago in college.
"What three objects or persons would you like to have along if you were stranded
on a desert island?"
He had listed: "Mary Astor, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a shaving
kit."
Well, here he was on a desert island, but without Miss Astor, with nothing to
read and with a stubby hedge on his face. Beside him was a life preserver,
carefully folded, bearing the imprint of the Honeybell. The Honeybell had been
Doug's home for the past six months. He and a small crew of natives were getting
along decently in the copra trade until a sudden storm had sent the boat to the
bottom. Doug had swum until he was exhausted, then clung to a drifting spar,
which, some hours later, at dawn, had bumped into this island.
Pelton had always pictured desert islands as sandy, pebbled, circular things,
about ten feet across, with a palm tree growing in the center. His island was
quite different. It was perhaps a quarter mile in diameter, noticeably convex,
so that the center was the highest point, the rest sloping away gradually under
the waters of the Pacific. It seemed to be of rock.
The castaway's assets were the clothes now drying in the sun, a tin of biscuits,
a pint of water and a wrist watch that had stopped at 4.06 a.m. His liability
was one uncrossable ocean.
Pelton was celebrating his twelfth hour as a shipwrecked sailor by trotting
around the edge of the island and singing disjointedly at the top of his lungs
when a plane appeared in the northeastern sky.
He stopped singing and ran to where his clothing was drying in the sun. He
climbed into his soggy slacks. After all, you never knew. There were lady
aviators.
This one wasn't, though. The man who opened the door at the side of the cabin
plane when it had bobbed over to the island was a tall, stocky man of about
fifty, with iron-gray hair and a large mustache, pointed at the ends.
"Hey!" he cried. "Want a lift?"
"Sure," said Doug. "If it's not too much trouble."
The other hopped onto the island, surveying it with interest. "Quite a place you
have here," he commented. "Have you laid claim to it?"
"Absolutely. It's called Pelton's Folly. I chose it in preference to a seventy
foot copra boat that wouldn't stay afloat." He held out his hand. "Doug Pelton,"
he grinned.
"Charlie Hayes," returned the older man. "You know, this place interests me.
What is it--stone?"
"I guess so."
Hayes noticed Doug's bare feet. "No, it isn't," he said. "Not if you can prance
around at noon on the equator with no shoes on." He bent down to touch it with