"E.Voiskunsky, I.Lukodyanov. The Crew Of The Mekong (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Box? Do you mean to say this little bar is hollow?"
"Exactly. The moment I picked it up at the bazaar I noticed that it's
too light for its size. But I didn't see any joints, and I wanted to learn
how it's put together."
"Be careful, Boris. It could be a booby trap."
"That's not likely. I don't see a single opening for a fuse or a safety
lock."
"But what if it really is one?"
Privalov grinned. "You remind me of the grandmother in Tolstoy's
Childhood. Remember? She refused to listen to an explanation of why small
shot isn't the same as gunpowder."
"A very flattering comparison."
"Don't fly into a huff. You see, the box was made very long ago, before
delayed-action mechanisms were invented." He set a frying pan on the gas
range and put the box in the pan.
"Are you going to fry it?"
"I'm applying the cleansing action of fire." Privalov turned the box
over. "We'll just warm up all these rheumatic old joints." Humming all the
time, he shook some tooth-powder into a saucer, poured water into it and
stirred the mixture, then dipped a cloth in it and smeared the sides of the
box. The chalk hissed as it quickly dried on the hot metal.
Next Privalov dipped a dry rag in kerosene and squeezed out the rag
above the box. The yellow drops were instantly soaked up by the chalk. Thin,
clear-cut lines forming a severe geometrical pattern showed up, as though
scratched on the box by a needle.
"It's put together with dowels, like a wooden box. The edges must have
been caulked, and then the whole thing was polished. Kerosene on chalk will
always show up a crack, no matter how tiny."
"You're not going to open it now, are you?"
"Oh, yes, I forgot. 'The Sorceress'." Privalov quickly tidied up the
table and went off to wash his hands.


Boris Privalov entered the laboratory towards the end of the day.
"Do you remember the rusty iron bar I picked up at the bazaar that
day?" he asked Nikolai and Yura. "Here it is, all cleaned up."
"Why, it's dowelled," said Nikolai, turning it over in his hands. "Must
have been made ages ago."
"Let's open it," Privalov suggested. He went over to the bench and put
the box into the jaws of a vise. With each tap of a hammer the dowels
loosened, one side of the box rising at an angle. Another blow of the
hammer, then still another, and one side of the box clattered to the floor.
Three heads bent over the open box. Inside lay a white roll of cloth. Yura
reached out to touch it but Privalov caught his arm. He cautiously unwrapped
the roll. Inside it were sheets of thin but strong paper.
The pages were covered with fine handwriting in letters that were
hardly connected with one another.
"It's in a foreign language!" Yura exclaimed. Privalov pushed his
glasses up onto his forehead and looked down at the manuscript.
"Black ink", he said. "It wasn't written in this century. Ink isn't