"Emil Petaja - Dinosaur Goes Hollywood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Petaja Emil)

EVERYTHING happens to me! First some slap-happy character gets me so jumpy I can't even go
out on the piazza and look at the stars with Susie May any more, without shuddering. It's about that
gargantuan space-ship that is going to smash up the whole world next April. So he said.
Then it happened again. Susie May dragged me over to Hollywood to a Colossus Production
premiere of Never Never, at the Cathay Square Theatre. We sat on crowded benches outside for a
dime, watching the celebrities parade in. Susie May loved it.
Afterward she said for me to wait for her, while she ran over to get Percy Parrish's autograph. I told
her I'd be in the Xotik bar-room, having a drink.
I sat at a corner table, sipping my sasparilla, and minding my own business—when all at once
somebody slapped me hard on the back, making me give a stout gentleman at the next table a free
shower bath.
"Hyah, chum!" this brawny individual said, grinning.
"I don't know you," I said coldly, looking him up and down through my heavy bifocals as if I had
trouble even seeing him.
This individual was six-foot-four, at least. He had a beef-and-gravy appearance. Ex-football tackle,
was my first impression.
He wasn't put out, as I had hoped. "I'm Jock Wemple!" he grinned jovially, extending an oversize
hand. "Shake!"
I shook, then removed what was left of my hand, and massaged it tenderly, saying "Damn!" under my
breath.
"Want I should tell you a story?" the individual named Jock Wemple suggested. He ordered three
beers—to save the waiter trips.
"That premiere reminds me of one. About another premiere here at Cathay Square—some years
ago. A scientific picture called Back To The Dawn. Remember?"
"No!" I said decisively. "And I don't care to—"
"Come on, chum! It'll pin your ears back!"
"Et tu, Brute," I interposed sadly.
"Say, I know I ain't no Tyrone Power," he grinned crookedly. "But you don't need to call me no
brute! Who are you, anyhow?"
"Lemuel Mason is my name," I told him. "I'm a bookkeeper by profession. Consolidated Cement." I
restrained a smile so as not to encourage him.
He nodded amiably. He seemed to take my introduction as a sign of approval, for he immediately
swung into his story—

LIKE I already told you, I'm Jock Wemple. I used to be bodyguard and handy man for the big-shot
scientist Stanton Greylock. Of course that was after I'd spent the best nine years of my life on a college
football team. Learning pursuing—as they say . . .
"Stanton Greylock was a small size guy with a droopy straw moustache. He always looked kind of
sad, like as if he just got a letter edged in black. Maybe it was his cloudy gray eyes. I don't know what
he had to be sad about, though. He wasn't married.
"Anyhow Greylock was one of the smartest guys in this country, or any place. Why, he won the
Nobel prize twice running, with one hand tied behind his back!
"Me, I don't know anything about science. I thought it meant `No Smoking' until I took this job with
Greylock."
I cleared my throat importantly:
"Until he disappeared so strangely four years ago, Stanton Greylock was considered the world's
foremost authority of certain phases of physics and related sciences," I put in, from my store of library
magazine knowledge. "He was also keenly interested in paleontology."
"Is that a fact?" Wemple blinked, somewhat put out. "Well, to get back to my story—
 "That morning Greylock and me drove out to the La Brea Pits. Our station wagon was loaded to the