"MacLean, Alistair - The Golden Rendezvous" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

work a whole hour in one day, all that much easier. But I was more
interested in the last two people to climb out of the packards. The
First was a man of about my own age and size, but the resemblance
stopped there. He looked like a cross between ramon novarro and rudolph
valentino, only handsomer. Tall, broad-shouldered, with deeply tanned,
perfectly sculpted latin features, he had the classical long, thin
moustache, strong, even teeth with that in-built neon phosphorescence
that seems to shine in any light from high noon till dark, and a darkly
gleaming froth of tight black curls on his head; he would have been a
lost man if you'd let him loose on the campus of any girls' university.
For all that, he looked as far from being a sissy as any man i'd ever
met: he had the strong chin, the balanced carriage, the light, springy
boxer's step of a man well aware that he can get through this world
without any help from a nursemaid. If nothing else, I thought sourly,
he would at least take Miss Beresford out of my hair. The other man was
a slightly smaller edition of the First, same features, same teeth, same
moustache and hair, only those were greying. He would be about
fifty-five. He had about him that indefinable look of authority and
assurance which can come from power, money, or a carefully cultivated
phoneyness. This, I guessed, would be the sefior miguel carreras who
inspired such fear in our local carracio agent. I wondered why. Ten
minutes later the last of our cargo was aboard and all that remained
were the three boxed coffins on the back of the old truck. I was
watching the bo'sun readying a sling round the First of those when a
well-detested voice said behind me: "this is Mr. carreras, sir. Captain
Bullen sent me." I turned round and gave fourth officer dexter the look
I specially reserved for fourth officer dexter. Dexter was the
exception to the rule that the fleet commodore always got the best
available in the company as far as officers and men were concerned, but
that was hardly the old man's fault: there were some men that even a
fleet commodore has to accept and dexter was one of them. A personable
enough youngster of twenty-one, with fair hair, slightly prominent blue
eyes, an excruciatingly genuine public-school accent, and limited
intelligence, dexter was the son-and, unfortunately, heir of lord
dexter, chairman and managing director of the blue mail. Lord dexter,
who had inherited about ten millions at the age of fifteen and,
understandably enough, had never looked back, had the quaint idea that
his own son should start from the bottom up and had sent him to sea as a
cadet some five years previously. Dexter took a poor view of this
arrangement: every man in the ship, from Bullen downwards, took a poor
view both of the arrangement and dexter, but there was nothing we could
do about it. "How do you do, sir?" I accepted carreras' outstretched
hand and took a good look at him. The steady dark eyes, the courteous
smile couldn't obscure the fact that there were many more lines about
his eyes and mouth at two feet than at fifty; but it also couldn't
obscure the compensatory fact that the air of authority and command was
now redoubled in force, and I put out of my mind any idea that this air
originated in phoneyness; it was the genuine article, and that was that.
"Mr. Carter? my pleasure." the hand was firm, the bow more than a
perfunctory nod, the cultured english the product of some stateside ivy