"Brian Lumley - Born Of The Winds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

life, the judge now studies the more obscure aspects of that science here in the thinly populated North. It
was Judge Andrews himself, on learning of my recent illness, who so kindly invited me to spend this
period of convalescence with him in Navissa, though by then I was already well on the way to recovery.

Not that his invitation gave me licence to intrude upon the judge’s privacy. It did not. I would do with
myself what I would, keeping out of his way as much as possible. Of course, no such arrangement was
specified, but I was aware that this was the way the judge would want it.

I had free run of the house, including the old gentleman’s library, and it was there one afternoon early in
the final fortnight of my stay that I found the several works of Samuel R. Bridgman, an English professor
of anthropology, whose mysterious death had occurred only a few dozen miles or so north of Navissa.

Normally such a discovery would have meant little to me, but I had heard that certain of Bridgeman’s
theories had made him something of an outcast among others of his profession; there had been among his
beliefs some which belonged in no way to the scientific. Knowing Judge Andrews to be a man who liked
his facts straight on the line, undistorted by whim or fancy, I wondered what there could be in the
eccentric Bridgeman’s works that prompted him to display them upon his shelves.

In order to ask him this very question, I was on my way from the small library room to Judge Andrews’s
study when I saw, letting herself out of the house, a distinguished-looking though patently nervous woman
whose age seemed rather difficult to gauge. Despite the trimness of her figure and the comparative
youthfulness of her skin, her hair was quite grey. She had plainly been very attractive, perhaps even
beautiful, in youth. She did not see me, or if she did glimpse me where I stood, then her agitated
condition did not admit of it. I heard her car pull away.

In the doorway of the judge’s study I formed my question concerning Bridgeman’s books.

“Bridgeman?” the old man repeated after me, glancing up sharply from where he sat at his desk.

“Just those books of his, in the library,” I answered, entering the room proper. “I shouldn’t have thought
that there’d be much for you, Judge, in Bridgeman’s work.”

“Oh? I didn’t know you were interested in anthropology, David?”

“Well, no, I’m not really. It’s just that I remember hearing a thing or two about this Bridgeman, that’s
all.”

“Are you sure that’s all?”

“Eh? Why, certainly! Should there be more?”

“Hmm,” he mused. “No, nothing much – coincidence. You see, the lady who left a few moments ago
was Lucille Bridgeman, Sam’s widow. She’s staying at the Nelson.”

“Sam?” I was immediately interested. “You knew him, then?”

“I did, fairly intimately, though that was many years ago. More recently, I’ve read his books. Did you
know that he died quite close by here?”

I nodded. “Yes, in peculiar circumstances I gather?”