"Murray Leinster - The Gadget Had a Ghost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

He opened the volume very carefully and handed it to Goghlan.
The thick, yellowed pages were covered with those graceless Greek
characters which—without capitals or divisions between words or
any punctuation or paragraphing—were the text of books when they
had just ceased to be written on long strips and rolled up on sticks.
Coghian regarded it curiously.
“Do you by any chance read Byzantine Greek?” asked the Turk
hopefully.
Coghian shook his head. The police lieutenant looked depressed.
He began to turn pages, while Coghlan held the book. The very first
page stood up stiffly. There was brown, crackled adhesive around its
edge, evidence that at some time it had been glued to the cover and
lately had been freed. The top half of the formerly hidden sheet was
now covered by a blank letterhead of the Istanbul Police
Departmenl~ clipped in place by modem
metal paperclips. On the uncovered part of the page, the bottom half,
there were five brownish smudges that somehow looked familiar.
Four in a row, and a larger one beneath them. Lieutenant Ghalil
offered a pocket magnifying-glass.
“Will you examine?” he asked.
Coghian looked. After a moment he raised his head.
“They’re fingerprints,” he agreed. “What of it?”
Duval stood up and abruptly began to pace up and down the
room, as if filled with frantic impatience. Lieutenant Ghalil drew a
deep breath.
“I am about to say the absurd,” he said ruefully. “M. Duval came
upon this book in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. It has been
owned by the library for more than a hundred years. Before, it was
owned by the Comptes de Huisse, who in the sixteenth century were
the patrons of a man known as Nostradamus. But the book itself is
of the thirteenth century. Written and bound in Byzantium. In the
Bibliotheque National, M. Duval observed that a leaf was glued
tightly. He loosened it. He found those fingerprints and—other
writing.”
Goghlan said, “Most interesting,” thinking that he should be
leaving for his dinner engagement with Laurie and her father.
“Of course,” said the police officer, “M. Duval suspected a hoax.
He had the ink examined chemically, then spectroscopically. But
there could be no doubt. The fingerprints were placed there when the
book was new. I repeat, there can be no doubt!”
Goghlan had no inkling of what was to come. He said, puzziedly:
“Fingerprinting is pretty modem stuff. So I suppose it’s re-
markable to find prints so old. But—”
Duval, pacing up and down the room, uttered a stifled excla-
mation. He stopped by Coghlan’s desk. He played feverishly with a
wooden-handled Kurdish dagger that Goghlan used as a letter-
opener, his eyes a little wild.
Lieutenant Ghalil said resignedly:
“The fingerprints are not remarkable, Mr. Coghian. They are
impossible. I assure you that, considering their age alone, they