"Gene Wolfe - Detective of dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

was strength in his wide, fleshy face; his high forehead and capacious
cranium suggested intellect; and his small, dark eyes, forever flickering as
they took in the appearance of my person, the expression of my face, and
the position of my hands and feet, ingenuity.
 No pretense was apt to be of service with such a man, and I told him
flatly that I had come as the emissary of Baron H____, that I knew what
troubled him, and that if he would cooperate with me I would help him if I
could.
"I know you, monsieur," he said, "by reputation. A business with which I
am associated employed you three years ago in the matter of a certain
mummy." He named the firm. "I should have thought of you myself."
"I did not know that you were connected with them."
"I am not, when you leave this room. I do not know what reward Baron
H____ has offered you should you apprehend the man who is oppressing
me, but I will give you, in addition to that, a sum equal to that you were paid
for the mummy. You should be able to retire to the south then, should you
choose, with the rent of a dozen villas."
"I do not choose," I told him, "and I could have retired long before. But
what you just said interests me. You are certain that your persecutor is a
living man?"
"I know men." Herr R____ leaned back in his chair and stared at the
painted ceiling. "As a boy I sold stuffed cabbage-leaf rolls in the street - did
you know that? My mother cooked them over wood she collected herself
where buildings were being demolished, and I sold them from a little cart
for her. I lived to see her with half a score of footmen and the finest house
in Lindau. I never went to school; I learned to add and subtract in the
streets - when I must multiply and divide I have my clerk do it. But I learned
men. Do you think that now, after forty years of practice, I could be
deceived by a phantom? No, he is a man - let me confess it, a stronger
man than I - a man of flesh and blood and brain, a man I have seen
somewhere, sometime, here in this city - and more than once."
"Describe him."
"As tall as I. Younger - perhaps thirty or thirty-five. A brown, forked beard,
so long." (He held his hand about fifteen centimeters beneath his chin.)
"Brown hair. His hair is not yet grey, but I think it may be thinning a little at
the temples."
"Don't you remember?"
"In my dream he wears a garland of roses - I cannot be sure."
"Is there anything else? Any scars or identifying marks?"
Herr R____ nodded. "He has hurt his hand. In my dream, when he holds
out his hand for the money, I see blood in it - it is his own, you understand,
as though a recent injury had reopened and was beginning to bleed again.
His hands are long and slender - like a pianist's."
"Perhaps you had better tell me your dream."
"Of course." He paused, and his face clouded, as though to recount the
dream were to return to it. "I am in a great house. I am a person of
importance there, almost as though I were the owner; yet I am not the
owner-"
 "Wait," I interrupted. "Does this house have a banquet hall? Has it a
pillared portico, and is it set in a garden?"