"065 (B056) - The Giggling Ghosts (1938-07) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

A. King Christophe blew out his cheeks, glared and intimidated the officer into listening.
"She are gas that make all this giggle!" Christophe declared. "She are gas, and she come from ground!"
"What kind of gas?" the cop wanted to know.
"Give me time, give me time!" said A. King Christophe indignantly.
The policeman called other policemen, and they called chemical experts; and A. King Christophe demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone that the earth in certain parts of the Jersey gas area was undoubtedly saturated with a mysterious vapor.
The newspapers broke out their biggest type.
MYSTERIOUS EARTH GAS,
NOT GHOSTS,
CAUSING GIGGLE DEATHS!
Two giggling victims had died by now. The poor grocery merchant went first, and the other victim was a truck driver.
A. King Christophe was hailed as a hero; he had accomplished nothing, but he was hailed anyway. He had learned there was gas.
But what kind of gas was it? That was the question.
"Have chemists make analysis," suggested A. King Christophe. "They might learn."
Why did the gas happen to be coming from the ground? That was another question. A. King Christophe pondered that.
"I have theory." Christophe blew his cheeks out. "Suppose this gas are deep in earth for long time. Suppose she not get out because of strata of rock over it, like a lid. Suppose earthquake crack the stone lid."
"Earthquake?"
"I say it may be."
It appeared, however, that no one had felt any earthquakes around New Jersey recently. The giggling ghost story seemed as sensible.
"Many earthquakes no one are notice!" A. King Christophe said angrily. "To find earthquake, look at instrument made to record them—instrument called seismograph!"
They consulted the seismographs at the university, the museum in Washington; so they found evidence of a subterranean earthquake in the vicinity of Jersey.
A score of people then popped up to declare they had felt the earthquake at the precise time the seismograph records said it had occurred. These people even described how pictures danced on the walls and glasses had jumped off tables; such is human nature.
Now it was generally concluded that a mystery gas had been imprisoned under the earth's crust for centuries, that an earthquake had cracked the crust, and that the gas was coming out and making people giggle themselves to death.
Ghosts—nothing!
Then William Harper Littlejohn put in an appearance, and the affair began to get complicated.
AS a geologist William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn had a reputation considerably exceeding that of A. King Christophe. Johnny was just about tops in the geology business.
Johnny Littlejohn was also probably the longest and the thinnest man who had ever been in that part of Jersey; newspapermen liked to label Johnny as being two men tall and half a man thick, and he came near being that. Johnny's clothing never fitted him, for no tailor could quite manage to cope with such a broomstick physique.
Johnny appeared in the gas disaster district to conduct an investigation of his own. Johnny's scientific instruments were more complicated than those used by A. King Christophe. Because Johnny had a geological reputation, a number of newspapermen followed him around, awaiting his conclusions.
When Johnny voiced his findings the first time, nobody understood him.
"I'll be superamalgamated!" Johnny exclaimed.
He had a habit of never using a small word when he could think of a big one.
"An ultraconsummate mumpsimus!" he added.
The reporters copied Johnny's big words down; the tongue-knotters always made good color in a news story.
"Now, just what do you mean?" the reporters asked. "Ghosts?"
Reluctantly, Johnny fell back on little words.
"There is gas," he said. "There is no doubt that the gas is causing the giggling, because it seems to be some nature of pulmonic—"
"Whoa!" a reporter interrupted. "Little words—if you don't mind."
"A pulmonic," Johnny explained, "is an agent affecting the lungs. In this case, it is causing spasmodic behavior, and eventual disintegration of the affected nervous area."
"So that's what you said," a reporter grunted. "That's what you meant by ultra-ultracon—"
"No, it isn't," Johnny corrected.
"Huh?"
"What I said," Johnny explained, "is that there has been a tremendous mistake."
"Mistake about what? You don't mean there is a ghost?"
"The earthquake."
"Meaning?"
"There wasn't any earthquake," Johnny said.
WORD of this remarkable statement reached A. King Christophe who, after sneering several times, blew out his cheeks.
"Who is this William Harper Littlejohn?" he jeered.
"He's got a bigger reputation than you have," he was told, but more impolitely.
"Poof!"
A. King Christophe let the air out of his cheeks. "He has reputation as Doc Savage hanger-on! I not consider him authority."