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

we'll have to find something on page four we can move front and then stick
in nine inches of filler where it came from."
I wandered down the stone to page four and picked up a pica stick to
measure things. Pete went over to the rack and got a galley of filler. About
the only thing that was anywhere near the right size was the story that
Clyde Andrews, Carmel City's banker and leading light of the local Baptist
Church, had given me about the rummage sale the church had planned for next
Tuesday evening.
It wasn't exactly a story of earth-shaking importance, but it would be
about the right length if we reset it indented to go in a box. And it had a
lot of names in it, and that meant it would please a lot of people, and
particularly Clyde Andrews, if I moved it up to the front page.
So we moved it. Rather, Pete reset it for a front page box item while I
plugged the gap in page four with filler items and locked up the page again.
Pete had the rummage sale item reset by the time I'd finished with page
four, and this time I waited for him to finish up page one, so we could go
to Smiley's together.
I thought about .that front page while I washed my hands. The Front
Page. Shades of Hecht and MacArthur. Poor revolving Horace Greeley.
Now I really wanted a drink.
Pete was starting to pound out a stone proof and I told him not to
bother. Maybe the customers would read page one, but I wasn't going to. And
if there was an upside-down headline or a pied paragraph, it would probably
be an improvement.
Pete washed up and we locked the door. It was still early for a
Thursday evening, not much after seven. I should have been happy about that,
and I probably would have been if we'd had a good paper. As for the one we'd
just put to bed, I wondered if it would live until morning.
Smiley had a couple of other customers and was waiting on them, and I
wasn't in any mood to wait for Smiley so I went around behind the bar and
got the Old Henderson bottle and two glasses and took them to a table for
Pete and myself. Smiley and I know one another well enough so it's always
all right for me to help myself, any time it's convenient and settle with
him afterward.
I poured drinks for Pete and me. We drank and Pete said, "Well, that's
that for another week, Doc."
I wondered how many times he'd said that in the ten years he'd worked
for me, and then I got to wondering how many times I'd thought it, which
would be
"How much is fifty-two times twenty-three, Pete?" I asked him.
"Huh? A hell of a lot. Why?"
I figured it myself. "Fifty times twenty-three is one thousand one
hundred and fifty; twice twenty-three more makes eleven ninety-six. Pete,
eleven hundred and ninety six times have I put that paper to bed on a
Thursday night and never once was there a really big hot news story in it."
"This isn't Chicago, Doe. What do you expect, a murder?"
"I'd love a murder," I told him.
It would have been funny if Pete had said, "Doc, how'd you like three
in one night?"
But he didn't, of course. In a way, though, he said something that was