"Philip E. High - The Artifact" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Phillip E)

excuse they'll block you. Worse, you're on your own. I can't help you directly.”

There were men sitting at a long table facing me with a man in a judge's robes sitting in the middle.

“The medicine man has arrived for his bones,” said someone nastily.

“If he expects us to give them we want some straight answers. Tell me, my good fellow. Are you a
medium, do you see visions or converse with departed spirits?”

“No I am not a medium, I see no visions and I have no connection with departed spirits.”

“You claim superiority. You know more about criminal detection than the experts?”

“You conclude that because I wish to try my methods I am disputing yours?”

“Barret, you cannot possibly find anything.”

“In which case why the objections? When I fail you can all laugh and say I told you so.”

There was a short uncomfortable silence, then: “Do you believe in life after death, medicine man?”

“No, Iknow there is life after death. There is a difference if you think about it.”

The man in the judge's robes rose and banged his fist on the table.

“Enough, this has become a farce. The man may be misguided but he's obviously sincere, and as he
rightly points out, we can laugh at him later.”

He paused and looked at everyone at the table. “We came very damn close there to branding ourselves
complete idiots. Give the man all he asks for.”

Ransome was smiling when I got back; word had evidently got around very quickly.

“It was not sheer unpleasantness,” he said. “They wanted to discredit you. They don't want outsiders,
particularly weird outsiders, invading their closed departments; they see themselves as a kind of
priesthood.”

I began to unpack my collection on my desk and he came closer. “I claim ignorance and on those
grounds hope to be excused. You'd like me to get you some equipment or something?”

I laughed. “Believe it or not, Chief, I am my own equipment.”

“You have some mystic application?”

“No, something quite ordinary and ages old. Science has tested on a technical level, materially. I work on
a different level of consciousness, I work mentally.”

“You're beyond me, Barret.”

“I'm not really, Chief. A material hand leaves a material print but it also leaves a psychic one. We had a