"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 15 - The Touch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

for his wife, a girlfriend, or even a nanny, to arrive from overseas? I mean,
he might have been expecting someone off a plane early in the morning.
Or he could have made arrangements with a partner to meet up here be-
fore catching some outbound flight." Shrugging, he looked to Phipps for
an explanation.
Phipps's Adam's apple bobbed as he moistened his throat. "Right, but
this girl—I mean the receptionist—she's the observant type, you know?
She was worried abart this . . . well, this babe-in-arms, who she said was
 NECROSCOPE: T H ET O U C H 15

lookin' pretty sickly. And no wife or woman on the scene, and nothin' 'eard
from room 2 1 3 right through the arternoon and evenin'. So I thought the
same as you: bugger all ter worry abart. So I told myself, 'Greg my lad,
don't you go lookin' for trouble. If trouble's in the air, it'll find you."
"And did it?" Samuels asked as the elevator halted with a slight jerk
on the second floor.
Not entirely with it—having said his piece and then gone back to his
own thoughts—Phipps blinked and said, "It?"
"Trouble." The Inspector sighed, doing his best to contain his impa-
tience. "Did it find you?"
Phipps's Adam's apple bobbed again. "Lord, vers!" he said, gruffly but
quietly. "Yers it did! Abart 'arf an hour ago, when I figured the kid 'ad been
cryin' long enough and banged on the door ter see what was goin' on, got
no answer and went in—and then called you lot."
Leaving the elevator, he pointed along the corridor with a scarred, big-
knuckled hand that was still trembling like a leaf in a gale. And: "Room
213, yers." He nodded, indicating the way while yet holding back. "It's just
along 'ere."
"Lead the way," said Samuels, who was only now beginning to feel or
experience something of the security man's anxiety, his trepidation . . .
his fear? But a big man like Phipps? A man who could obviously take care
of himself, as well as manhandle others? He was all that, yet now some-
one who seemed unmanned.
The receding string of subdued lights in the corridor's narrow ceiling
were flickering and buzzing; they seemed on the point of shorting out. It
could be the same problem Samuels had noticed in the neons at the ho-
tel's entrance, but it loaned the corridor a surreal, almost alien dynamic
where the walls seemed to shift in and out of perspective. It was an eerie
strobe-like effect that had the Inspector blinking and feeling confused
and dizzy. Moreover, the harsh, oddly wheezing or choked wailing of a
child—one who had been crying for quite a long time—was now clearly
audible.
The crying got louder as they approached room 213, where Phipps
stopped short, handed a duplicate key to the Inspector, and stepped back a
pace. 'That's it," he said. 'This is as far as I goes. It's . . . it's all yours now."
He shook his head, as if to deny all responsibility from this time forward.
Inspector Samuels, taking him by the elbow and giving him back the
key, said, "No, you open it."
But the senior paramedic said, "Hang on, sir! Not so fast. First he
must tell us what's in there. We're completely in the dark here!"