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

logique! Be so kind, M. Coghlan, as to regard the rest of the page!”
Goghian pulled off the clips that held the police-department
letterhead over the top of the parchment page, and immediately
wondered if his hair was really standing on end. There was writ-
ing there. He saw words in faded, unbelievably ancient ink. It was
modern English script. The handwriting was as familiar to
Coghlan as his own— Which it was. It said!

See Thomas Coghian, 750 Fatima, Istanbul.
Professor, President, so what?
Gadget at 8o Hosain, second floor, back room.
Make sure of Mannard. To be killed.

Underneath, his fingerprints remained visible.
Coghlan stared at the sheet. He found his glass and gulped at it.
On more mature consideration, he drained it. The situation seemed
to call for something of the sort.
There was silence in the room, save for the drowsy sounds of the
night outside. They were not all drowsy, at that. There were
voices, and somewhere a radio emitted that nasal masculine howling
which to the Turkish ear is music. Uninhibited taxicabs, an
unidentifiable jingling, an intonation of speech, all made the sound
that of Istanbul and no other place on earth. Moreover, they were the
sounds of Istanbul at nightfall.
Duval was still. Ghalil looked at Coghian and was silent. And
Coghlan stared at the sheet of ancient parchment.
He faced the completely inexplicable, and he had to accept it. His
name and present address—no puzzle, if Ghalil simply lied. The line
about Laurie’s father, Mannard, implied that he was in danger of
some sort; but it didn’t mean much because of its vagueness. The
line referring to another address, 8o Hosain, and a “gadget” was
wholly without any meaning at all. But the line about “professor,
president”—that hit hard.
It was what Coghlan told himself whenever he thought of Laurie.
He was a mere instructor in physics. As such, it would not be a good
idea for him to ask Laurie to marry him. In time he might become a
professor. Even then it would not be a good idea to ask the daughter
of an umpty-millionaire to marry him. In more time, with the breaks,
he might become a college president—the odds were astronomically
against it, but it could happen. Then what? He’d last in that high
estate until a college board of trustees decided that somebody else
might be better at begging for money. All in all, then, too darned
few prospects to justify his ever asking Laurie to marry him—only
an instructor, with a professorship the likely peak of his career, and a
presidency of a college something almost unimaginable. So, when
Coghlan thought of Laurie, he said sourly to himself, “Professor,
president, so what?” And was reminded not to yield to any in-
clination to be romantic.
But he had not said that four-word phrase to anybody on earth.
He was the only human being to whom it would mean anything at