"Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 4 - The Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

(and sometimes frighteningly well) how lucky he was, certainly more lucky than most people he knew in
that he was able to do exactly what he wanted . . . and was getting paid for the pleasure.
In her letters his mother stopped just short of calling it sinful. His father merely shrugged, smiled, and
looked wistful.
The breeze picked up, and he hunched his shoulders against it, a cold breeze suddenly that made him
squint and turn away. And found himself looking back into the woods, as though someone behind him were
breathing shadows at his back. It wasn't the first time he had felt it—here, even in town—and the reaction
disturbed him. He wondered, then, if per-haps he wasn't trying too hard this time to get the commission. It
wouldn't be the first instance he could remember when he had driven himself too hard.
But he knew that he hated almost too much to fail.

Just eight years ago—almost to the day, he realized with a start, and a reminder for a celebration—he
had completed his hitch in the service and had decided (as much from laziness as any deep, compelling
desire) that there had to be a way he could combine his love for mysteries in book form with a way to
make a living. He had once considered a try at archeology— the perfect life, it seemed, to be able to roam
the world in pursuit of ancient civilizations, to find a Rosetta stone of his own or the whereabouts of the
true Atlantis or the untrammeled remains of Carthage in the North African desert; Stonehenge fascinated
him, and Napoleon's real death; how had Rasputin actually died, and what had really happened to those
poor souls at Roanoke.
Nothing original, nothing spectacular or insightful about the way he perceived it, and he had learned
rather quickly that he hadn't had the talent. But he did have the patience—and he did have what retrospect
proved to be an incredible stroke of luck. The right place, and the right time, and a reception for a
challenge.
Shortly after his return to Oxrun, his parents had decided they had had enough of the Puritan work ethic.
They sold their small business, gave him the house when he insisted on staying behind, and moved to
Colorado. A month afterward, his conscience in-forming him unmercifully that he could not live forever on
his discharge pay, he attended a cocktail party where, during the course of the evening, an acquaintance
mentioned she was trying to locate one of the original theater posters for a Broadway show that had lasted
exactly ten performances back in 1927. The Marvelous Kings, she'd thought it was called. Or something
like that. But she had no idea of the playwright, the actors, or even the subject in-volved.
A week later he recalled the conversation, and the title; and he could not get clear of it once remembered
no matter how hard he tried. He thought about it, cursed at it, worried at it, lay awake nights and muttered
about it, finally trained into New York because it was growing impossible, like shards of popcorn, to get it
the hell out of his teeth.
During his first day he sat in his hotel room and called himself stupid. Read the Manhattan Yellow Pages.
Saw a movie. Read the Yellow Pages again.
Then, the following morning, he told himself to either fish or cut bait; but the popcorn was still there, more
firmly lodged than ever.
So he bothered Equity, the Shuberts, City Hall, and the archives of the Metropolitan. He talked with
doormen, ticket takers, stagehands, and old actors. He prowled museums he didn't know existed. He
hunted agents and studios and theaters and bars. Within four days he had a name. In two more he was in
Boston. A day later he walked up to the woman's house in Oxrun and asked her how much she was willing
to pay for the poster he had found.
She was willing, as it turned out, to pay quite a lot.
In less than a month he had turned half of the Raglin Street house into an office, found a lawyer and
incorporated himself, and began leaving word at par-ties, at the post office, at the shops, that he was open
for business. The only things he wouldn't find were lost husbands and strayed children.
The house, however, became too uncomfortable. There were too many other people moving through the
rooms, commenting with their eyes on the fur-nishings, his living. A year ago, then, he arranged to take over
an empty office on High Street, just off Centre, with rooms above that he used for storage. Miller's