"Murray Leinster - Time Tunnel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

he said it could not be duplicated for ten times what I paid
for it! But, he also said there is no large market for snuff-
boxes. I'll make a bet that these shopkeepers are too stupid
to realize that work like this is different from any other
curio product!"
Harrison swallowed. He felt a suspicion. But it was totally
unrealistic to think that because there had been wildly un-
likely coincidences in the immediate past, that there would
be more wildly unlikely ones turning up in orderly succession.
Yet...
"Pepe," he said unhappily, "you say it would take weeks
to create that snuffbox. How many did you see, and how
much time would be required to make them, by hand? And
you saw the guns. They are not machine-made. They are
strictly hand-craft products. How many man-years of labor
do they represent? And there were some books in the shop,
set in type of the Napoleonic period and printed on paper
that simply is not made any more. How long to make the
paper and set the type and print and bind those books?
And how much investment in printing replicas of even one
issue of the Moniteur? There are weeks of the Moniteur
in the window, if not months! Do you think small shop-
keepers could finance all this? And do you think that
people who could finance such an enterprise would pick out
CarroU, Dubois et Cie for their only outlet?"
Pope swore. Then he admitted:
"I didn't think of those angles. But what is the answer?"
"I haven't the least idea," said Harrison unhappily. "It's
ridiculous to believe in the only explanation that would
explain it."
"That someone travels from now to then?" Pepe snorted.
"My dear fellow, that is nonsense! You know it is non-
sense!"
"I agree with you," said Harrison regretfully. "But I've
never noticed that being nonsensical keeps things from hap-
pening. Don't you ever read about politics?"
"I admit," Pepe conceded with dignity, "that foolish things
are done by governments and great men, but I cannot do
anything about them! But if there is a genuine artist working
for a pittance so that a French shopkeeper can make a shrewd
profit out of his commercial innocence . . . That I can do
something about!"
"Such as what?" asked Harrison. Internally, he struggled
against an appalling tendency to think in terms of the
preposterous.
"I am going to the shop again," said Pepe sternly. "I won't
talk to your Valerie, because you saw her first. But I shall
say that I want a special bit of work done, only it will be
necessary for me to discuss it with the workman. These shop-
keepers will see the chance to make an inordinate profit. I