"Manitou - 01 - The Manitou" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

He laid down the telephone and sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. It was St. Valentine's Day, and outside in the streets of New York City the temperature had dropped to fourteen degrees and there was six inches of snow on the ground. The sky was metallic and overcast, and the traffic crept about on muffled wheels. From the eighteenth story of the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital, the city had a weird and luminous quality that he'd never seen before. It was like being on the moon, thought Dr. Hughes. Or the end of the world. Or the Ice Age.

There was trouble with the heating system, and he had left his overcoat on. He sat there under the puddle of light from his desk-lamp, an exhausted young man of thirty-three, with a nose as sharp and pointy as a scalpel, and a scruffy shock of dark brown hair. He looked more like a teenage auto mechanic than a national expert on malignant tumors.

His office door swung open and a plump, white-haired lady with upswept red spectacles came in, bearing a sheaf of paper and a cup of coffee.

"Just a little more paperwork, Dr. Hughes. And I thought you'd like something to warm you up."

"Thank you, Mary." He opened the new file that she had brought him, and sniffed more persistently. "Jesus, have you seen this stuff? I'm supposed to be a consultant, not a filing clerk. Listen, take this back and dump it on Dr. Ridgeway. He likes paper. He likes it better than flesh and blood."

Mary shrugged. "Dr. Ridgeway sent it to you."

Dr. Hughes stood up. In his overcoat, he looked like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. He waved the file around in exasperation, and it knocked over his single Valentine's card, which he knew had been sent by his mother.

"Oh ... Okay. I'll have a look at it later. I'm going down to see Dr. McEvoy. He has a patient he wants me to look at."

"Will you be long, Dr. Hughes?" asked Mary. "You have a meeting at four-thirty."

Dr. Hughes stared at her wearily, as though he was wondering who she was.

"Long? No, I don't think so. Just as long as it takes."

He stepped out of his office into the neon-lit corridor. The Sisters of Jerusalem was an expensive private hospital, and never smelled of anything as functional as carbolic and chloroform. The corridors were carpeted in thick red plush, and there were fresh-cut flowers at every corner. It was more like the kind of hotel where middle-aged executives take their secretaries for a weekend of strenuous sin.

Dr. Hughes called an elevator and sank to the fifteenth floor. He stared at himself in the elevator mirror, and he considered he was looking more sick than some of his patients. Perhaps he would take a vacation. His mother had always liked Florida, or maybe they could visit his sister in San Diego.

He went through two sets of swing doors, and into Dr. McEvoy's office. Dr. McEvoy was a short, heavy-built man whose white coats were always far too tight under his arms. He looked like a surgical sausage. His face was big and moonlike and speckled, with a snub little Irish nose. He had once played football for the hospital team, until he had fractured his kneecap in a violent tackle. Nowadays, he walked with a slightly over-dramatized limp.

"Glad you came down," he smiled. "This really is very peculiar, and I know you're the world's greatest expert."

"Hardly," said Dr. Hughes. "But thanks for the compliment."

Dr. McEvoy stuck his finger in his ear and screwed it around with great thoughtfulness and care. 'The X-rays will be here in five or ten minutes. Meanwhile. I can't think what else I can do."

"Can you show me the patient?" asked Dr. Hughes.

"Of course. She's in my waiting room. I should take your overcoat off if I were you. She might think I brought you in off the street."

Dr. Hughes hung up his shapeless black coat, and then followed Dr. McEvoy through to the brightly lit waiting room. There were armchairs and magazines and flowers, and a fish tank full of bright tropical fish. Through the venetian blinds, Dr. Hughes could see the odd metallic radiance of the afternoon snow.

In a corner of the room, reading a copy of Sunset, was a slim dark-haired girl. She had a squarish, delicate face -- a bit like an imp, thought Dr. Hughes. She was wearing a plain coffee-colored dress that made her cheeks look rather sallow. The only clue to her nervousness was an ashtray crammed with cigarette butts, and a haze of smoke in the air.

"Miss Tandy," said Dr. McEvoy, "this is Dr. Hughes. Dr. Hughes is an expert on conditions of your kind, and he would just like to take a look at you and ask you a few questions."

Miss Tandy laid aside her magazine and smiled. "Sure," she said, in a distinctive New England accent. Good family, thought Dr. Hughes. He didn't have to guess if she was wealthy or not. You just didn't seek treatment at the Sisters of Jerusalem Hospital unless you had more cash than you could raise off the floor.

"Lean forward," said Dr. Hughes. Miss Tandy bent over, and Dr. Hughes lifted the hair at the back of her neck.

Right in the hollow of her neck was a smooth round bulge, about the size and shape of a glass paperweight. Dr. Hughes ran his fingers over it, and it seemed to have the normal texture of a benign fibrous growth.