"Bester, Alfred - Hell Is Forever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

Music Sidra Peel

Finchley said: “A little comedy is a change, isn’t it?”
Lady Sutton shuddered with uncontrolled laughter. “Astaroth was a lady! Are you sure you wrote it, Chris?”
There was no answer from Braugh, only the buzz of preparations from the far end of the room, where a small stage had been erected and curtained off.
She bellowed in her broken bass: “Hey, Chris! Hey, there—”
The curtain split and Christian Braugh thrust his albino head through. His face was partially made up with red eyebrows and beard and dark-blue shadows around the eyes. He said: “Beg pardon, Lady Sutton?”
At the sight of his face she rolled over the divan like a mountain of jelly. Across her helpless body, Finchley smiled to Braugh, his lips unfolding in a cat’s grin. Braugh moved his white head in imperceptible answer.
“I said, did you really write this, Chris ... or have you hired a ghost again?”
Braugh looked angry, then suddenly disappeared behind the curtain. “Oh my hat!” gurgled Lady Sutton. “This is better than a gallon of champagne. And, speaking of the same . . . who’s nearest the bubbly? Bob? Pour some more. Bob! Bob Peel!”
The man slumped in the chair alongside the ice buckets never moved. He was lying on the nape of his neck, feet thrust out in a V before him, his dress shirt buckled under his bearded chin. Finchley went across the room and looked down at him.
“Passed out,” he said.
“So early? Well, no matter. Fetch me a glass, Dig, there’s a good lad.” Finchley filled a prismed champagne glass and brought it to Lady Sutton. From a small, cameo-faced vial she added three drops of laudanum, swirled the sparkling mixture once and then sipped while she read the program.
“A Necromancer . . . that’s you, eh, Dig?”
He nodded.
“And what’s a Necromancer?”
“A kind of magician, Lady Sutton.”
“Magician? Oh, that’s good . . . that’s very good!” She spilled champagne on her vast, blotchy bosom and dabbed ineffectually with the program.
Finchley lifted a hand to restrain her and said: “You ought to be careful with that program, Lady Sutton. I made only one print and then destroyed the plate. It’s unique and liable to be valuable.”
“Collector’s item, eh? Your work, of course, Dig?”
“Yes.’’
“Not much of a change from the usual pornography, hey?” She burst into another thunder of laughter that degenerated into a fit of hacking coughs. She dropped the glass altogether. Finchley flushed, then retrieved the glass and returned it to the buffet, stepping carefully over Peel’s legs. “And who’s this Astaroth?” Lady Sutton went on.
From behind the curtain, Theone Dubedat called: “Me! I! Ich! Moi!” her voice was husky. It had a quality of gray smoke.
“Darling, I know it’s you, but what are you?”
“A devil, I think.”
Finchley said: “Astaroth is some sort of legendary arch-demon—a top-ranking devil, so to speak.”
“Theone a devil? No doubt of it—” Exhausted with rapture, Lady Sutton lay quiescent and musing on the patterned divan. At last she raised an enormous arm and examined her watch. The flesh hung from her elbows in elephantine creases, and at the gesture it shook and a little shower of torn sequins glittered down from her sleeve.
“You’d best get on with it, Dig. I’ve got to leave at midnight.”
“Leave?”
“You heard me.”
Finchley’s face contorted. He bent over her, tense with suppressed emotions, his bleak eyes examining her. “What’s up? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then—”
“A few things have changed, that’s all.”
“What’s changed?”
Her face turned harsh as she returned his stare. The bulging features seemed to stiffen into obsidian. “Too soon to tell you . . . but you’ll find out quick enough. Now I don’t want any more pestering from you, Dig, m’lad!”
Finchley’s scarecrow features regained some measure of control. He started to speak, but before he could utter a word Sidra Peel suddenly popped her head out of the alcove alongside the stage, where the organ had been placed. She called: “Robert!”
In a constricted voice Finchley said: “Bob’s passed out again, Sidra.”
She emerged from the alcove, walked jerkily across the room and stood looking down in her husband’s face. Sidra Peel was short, slender and dark. Her body was like an electric high-tension wire, alive with too much current, yet coruscated, stained and rusted from too much exposure to passion. The deep black sockets of her eyes were frigid coals with gleaming white points. As she gazed at her husband, her long fingers writhed; then, suddenly, her hand lashed out and struck the inert face.
“Swine!” she hissed.
Lady Sutton laughed and coughed all at once. Sidra Peel shot her a venomous glance and stepped toward the divan, the sharp crack of her heel on the walnut sounding like a pistol shot. Finchley gestured a quick warning that stopped her. She hesitated, then returned to the alcove, and said: “The music’s ready.”
“And so am I,” said Lady Sutton. “On with the show and all that, eh?” She spread herself across the divan like a crawling tumor the while Finchley propped scarlet pillows under her head. “It’s really nice of you to play this little comedy for me, Dig. Too bad there’re only six of us here tonight. Ought to have an audience, eh?”
“You’re the only audience we want, Lady Sutton.”
“Ah! Keep it all in the family?”
“So to speak.”
“The Six—Happy Family of Hatred.”
“That’s not so, Lady Sutton.”
“Don’t be an ass, Dig. We’re all hateful. We glory in it. I ought to know. I’m the Bookkeeper of Disgust. Some day I’ll let you see all the entries. Some day soon.,,
“What sort of entries?”
“Curious already, eh? Oh, nothing spectacular. Just the way Sidra’s been trying to kill her husband—and Bob’s been torturing her by holding on. And you making a fortune out of filthy pictures and eating your rotten heart out for that frigid devil, Theone—”