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

(for some strange whimsy, explicable only on a psychoanalyst's couch,
lord dexter, himself a rabid teetotaller, had elected to name his
various ships after divers wines and other spirituous liquors.) the
brandywine had been one of two blue mail vessels engaged on a regular
run between new york and various british possessions in the west indies,
and lord dexter, eying the luxury cruise liners which plied regularly
between new york and the caribbean and seeing no good reason why he
shouldn't elbow his way into this lucrative dollar-earning market, had
some extra cabins fitted on the brandywine and advertised them in a few
very select american newspapers and magazines, making it quite plain
that he was interested only in top people. Among the attractions
offered had been a complete absence of bands, dances, concerts,
fancy-dress balls, swimming pools, tombola, deck games, sight-seeing and
parties. A genius could have made such desirable and splendidly
resounding virtues out of things he didn't have anyway. All he offered
on the positive side was the mystery and romance of a tramp ship which
sailed to unknown destinations-this didn't make any alterations to
regular schedules; all it meant was that the captain kept the names of
the various ports of call to himself until shortly before he arrived
there and the resources and comfort of a telegraph lounge which remained
in continuous touch with the new york, london, and paris stock
exchanges. The initial success of the scheme was fantastic. In stock
exchange parlance, the issue was oversubscribed a hundred times. This
was intolerable to lord dexter; he was obviously attracting far too many
of the not quite top people, aspiring would-he's on the lower-middle
rungs of the ladder who had not yet got past their first few million,
people with whom top people would not care to associate. He doubled his
prices. It made no difference. He trebled them and in the process made
the gratifying discovery that there were many people in the world who
would pay literally almost anything not only to be different and
exclusive but to be known to be different and exclusive. Lord dexter
held up the building of his latest ship, the campari, had designed and
built into her a dozen of the most luxurious cabin suites ever seen, and
sent her to new york, confident that she would soon recoup the outlay of
a quarter of a million pounds extra cost incurred through the building
of those cabins. As usual, his confidence was not misplaced. There
were imitators, of course, but one might as well have tried to imitate
buckingham palace, the grand canyon, or the cullinan diamond. Lord
dexter left them all at the starting date. He had found his formula and
he stuck to it unswervingly: comfort, convenience, quiet, good food, and
good company. Where comfort was concerned, the fabulous luxury of the
staterooms had to be seen to be believed; convenience, as far as the
vast majority of the male passengers was concerned, found its ultimate
in the juxtaposition, in the campari's unique telegraph lounge, of the
stock-exchange tickers and one of the most superbly stocked bars in the
world. Quiet was achieved by an advanced degree of insulation both in
cabin suites and engine room, by imitating the royal yacht britannia
inasmuch as that no orders were ever shouted and the deck crew and
stewards invariably wore rubber-soled sandals and by eliminating all the
bands, parties, games, and dances which lesser cruise passengers