"Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock (англ) " - читать интересную книгу автора

one hot story to break to a panting public."
"Hell, Doc, nobody looks for hot news in a country weekly."
"I know," I said. "That's why I'd like to fool them just once. I've
been running the Clarion twenty-three years. One hot story. Is that much to
ask?"
Smiley frowned. "There've been a couple of burglaries. And one murder,
a few years ago."
"Sure," I said, "and so what? One of the factory hands out at Bonney's
got in a drunken argument with another and hit him too hard in the fight
they got into. That's not murder; that's manslaughter, and anyway it
happened on a Saturday and it was old stuff everybody in town knew about it
by the next Friday when the Clarion came out."
"They buy your paper anyway, Doc. They look for their names for having
attended church socials and who's got a used washing machine for sale and
want a drink?"
"It's about time one of us thought of that," I said.
He poured a shot for me and, so I wouldn't have to drink alone, a short
one for himself. We drank them and I asked him, "Think Carl will be in
tonight?"
I meant Carl Trenholm, the lawyer, who's about my closest friend in
Carmel City, and one of the three or four in town who play chess and can be
drawn into an intelligent discussions of something besides crops and
politics. Carl often dropped in Smiley's on Thursday evenings, knowing that
I always came in for at least a few drinks after putting the paper to bed.
"Don't think so," Smiley said. "Carl was in most of the afternoon and
got himself kind of a snootful, to celebrate. He got through in court early
and he won his case. Guess he went home to sleep it off."
I said, "Damn. Why couldn't he have waited till this evening? I'd have
helped him Say, Smiley, did you say Carl was celebrating because he won
that case? Unless we're talking about two different things, he lost it. You
mean the Bonney divorce?"
"Yeah."
"Then Carl was representing Ralph Bonney, and Bonney's wife won the
divorce."
"You got it that way in the paper, Doc?"
"Sure," I said. "It's the nearest thing I've got to a good story this
week."
Smiley shook his head. "Carl was saying to me he hoped you wouldn't put
it in, or anyway that you'd hold it down to a short squib, just the fact
that she got the divorce."
I said, "I don't get it, Smiley. Why? And didn't Carl lose the case?"
Smiley leaned forward confidentially across the bar, although he and I
were the only ones in his place. He said, "It's like this, Doc. Bonney
wanted the divorce. That wife of his was a bitch, see? Only he didn't have
any grounds to sue on, himself not any that he'd have been willing to bring
up in court, anyway, see? So he well, kind of bought his freedom. Gave her
a settlement if she'd do the suing, and he admitted to the grounds she gave
against him. Where'd you get your version of the story?"
"From the judge," I said.
"Well, he just saw the outside of it. Carl says Bonney's a good joe and