"Maclean, Alistair - 1970 - Caravan to Vaccares" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

'No!'
'Please, Cecile.'
'No!'
'Remember the caverns. I haven't a lead.'
'Oh, God, don't!'
'Well, then.'
'But what can I do?'
'Start off with the old mumbo-jumbo. Then say you see he has very important plans in the near future and if he is successful—then stop there. Refuse to read any more and come away. Give him the impression that he has no future. Observe his reactions.'
'Then you really do suspect—'
'I suspect nothing.'
Reluctantly she pushed back her chair and rose. 'Pray to Sara for me.'
'Sara?'
'She's the patron saint of the gypsies, isn't she?'
Bowman watched her as she moved away. She side-
stepped politely to avoid bumping into another customer who had just entered, an ascetic and other-worldly looking priest: it was impossible to imagine Simon Searl as anything other than a selfless and dedicated man of God in whose hands one would willingly place one's life. They murmured apologies and Cecile carried on and stopped at the table of Le Grand Duc, who lowered his coffee cup and glanced up in properly ducal irritation.
'Well, what is it?'
'Good morning, sir.'
'Yes, yes, yes, good morning.' He picked up his coffee cup again. 'What is it?'
'Tell your fortune, sir?'
'Can't you see I'm busy? Go away.'
'Only ten francs, sir.'
'I haven't got ten francs.' He lowered his cup again and looked at her closely for the first time. 'But by Jove, though, if only you'd blonde hair—'
Cecile smiled, took advantage of the temporary moment of admiration and picked up his left hand.
'You have a long lifeline,' she announced.
'I'm as fit as a fiddle.'
'And you come of noble blood.'
'Any fool can see that.'
'You have a very kind disposition—'
'Not when I'm starving.' He snatched away his hand, used it to pick up a roll, then glanced upwards as Lila came back to the table. He pointed his roll at Cecile. 'Remove this young pest. She's upsetting me.'
'You don't look upset, Charles.'
'How can you see what's happening to my digestion?'
Lila turned to Cecile with a smile that was half-friendly, half-apologetic, a smile that momentarily faded as she realized who it was. Lila put her smile back in place and said: 'Perhaps you would like to read my hand?' The tone was perfectly done, conciliatory without being patronizing, a gently implied rebuke to Le Grand Duc's boorishness. Le Grand Duc remained wholly unaffected.
'At a distance, if you please,' he said firmly. 'At a distance.'
They moved off and Le Grand Duc watched them go
with an expression as thoughtful as possible for one whose jaws are moving with metronomic regularity. He looked away from the girls and across the table where Lila had been sitting. Bowman was looking directly at him but almost immediately looked away. Le Grand Duc tried to follow Bowman's altered line of sight and it seemed to him that Bowman was looking fixedly at a tall thin priest who sat with a cup of coffee before him, the same priest, Le Grand Duc realized, as he'd seen blessing the gypsies by the Abbey de Montmajour. And there was no dispute as to where the object of Simon Searl's interest lay: he was taking an inordinate interest in Le Grand Duc himself. Bowman watched as Lila and Cecile spoke together some little way off: at the moment Cecile was holding Lila's hand and appearing to speak persuasively while Lila smiled in some embarrassment. He saw Lila press something into Cecile's hand, then abruptly lost interest in both. From the corner of his eye he had caught sight of something of much more immediate importance: or he thought he had.
Beyond the patio was the gay and bustling fiesta scene in the Boulevard des Lices. Tradesmen were still setting up last-minute stalls but by this time they were far outnumbered by sightseers and shoppers. Together they made up a colourful and exotic spectacle. The rare person dressed in a sober business suit was strikingly out of place. Camera-behung tourists were there in their scores, for the most part dressed with that excruciatingly careless abandon that appears to afflict most tourists the moment they leave their own borders, but even they formed a relatively drab back-cloth for the three widely differing types of people who caught and held the eye in the splendid finery of their clothes—the Arlesienne girls so exquisitely gowned in their traditional fiesta costumes, the hundreds of gypsies from a dozen different countries and the guardians, the cowboys of the Camargue.
Bowman leaned forward in his seat, his eyes intent. Again he saw what had attracted his attention in the first place--a flash of titian hair, but unmistakable. It was Marie le Hobenaut and she was walking very quickly. Bowman looked away as Cecile rejoined him and sat down.
'Sorry. Up again. A job. Left on the street—'
'But don't you want to hear—and my breakfast—'
'Those can wait. Gypsy girl, titian hair, green and black costume. Follow her. See where she's going—and she's going some place. She's in a tearing hurry. Now!'
'Yes, sir.' She looked at him quizzically, rose and left. He did not watch her go. Instead, he looked casually around the patio. Simon Searl, the priest, was the first to go and he did so almost immediately, leaving some coins by his coffee cup. Seconds later, Bowman was on his feet and following the priest out into the street. Le Grand Duc, with his face largely obscured by a huge coffee cup, watched the departure of both.
Among the colourful crowds, the very drabness of Searl's black robes made him an easy figure to follow. What made him even easier to follow was the fact that, as befitted a man of God, he appeared to have no suspicions of his fellow-men for he did not once look back over his shoulder. Bowman closed up till he was within ten feet of him. Now he could clearly see Cecile not much more than the same distance ahead of Searl and, occasionally, there was a brief glimpse of Marie le Hobenaut's titian hair. Bowman closed up even more on Searl and waited his opportunity.
It came almost at once. Hard by a group of fish-stalls half-a-dozen rather unprepossessing gypsies were trying to sell some horses that had seen better days. As Bowman, no more than five feet behind Searl now, approached the horses he bumped into a dark, swarthy young man with a handsome face and hairline moustache: he sported a black sombrero and rather flashy, tight-fitting dark clothes. Both men murmured apologies, side-stepped and passed on. The dark young man took only two steps, turned and looked after Bowman, who was now almost lost to sight, edging his way through the group of horses.
Ahead of him, Searl stopped as a restive horse whinnied, tossed its head and moved to block his progress. The horse reared, Searl stepped prudently backwards and as he did so Bowman kicked him behind the knee. Searl grunted in agony and fell to his sound knee. Bowman, concealed by horses on both sides of him, stooped solicitously over Searl and chopped the knuckles of his right hand into the base of the man's neck. Searl collapsed.
'Watch those damned horses!' Bowman shouted. At once several gypsies quieted the restive horses and pulled them apart to make a clear space round the fallen priest.
'What happened?' one of them demanded. 'What happened?'
'Selling that vicious brute?' Bowman asked. 'He ought to be destroyed. Kicked him right in the stomach. Don't just stand there. Get a doctor.'
One of the gypsies at once hurried away. The others stooped low over the prostrate man and while they did so Bowman made a discreet withdrawal. But it wasn't so discreet as to go unobserved by the same dark young man who had earlier bumped into Bowman: he was busy studying his fingernails.
Bowman was finishing off his breakfast when Cecile returned.
'I'm hot,' she announced. She looked it. 'And I'm hungry.'