"068 (B023) - Fortress of Solitude (1938-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The other gate admitted to a walk which led straight to the mansion door. The house itself was generally square; had two stories and an attic, part of which Serge Mafnoff had walled off and air-conditioned for his private study. Behind the house was a sloping park which slanted down, unbroken except for two boulevards, to the wide, teeming Hudson River and the inspiring Palisades beyond.



Serge Mafnoff screamed in his study.



Every servant in the great mansion heard the shriek, and each one of them jumped violently.



The cook cut the forefinger of her left hand to the bone with the butcher knife, so great was her start. The finger leaked a thread of crimson for some time thereafter - which turned out to be important.



The scream brought all the servants running upstairs. They piled into the study. They stopped. It was impossible to believe their eyes.



Impossible to comprehend that Serge Mafnoff could have become a black man.





SERGE Mafnoff was all black. Not only his skin, his fingernails, his eyes, his teeth - his mouth was open in the most awful kind of a strangling grimace. All black. That evening he had put on pants and vest of a gray suit, and a robe the nationalistic red color of the Soviet. but these were now the hue of drawing ink.



A jet-black statue, standing.



The butler moaned. The chauffeur made a croaking noise. The cook's hand shook, and her cut finger showered red drops over the floor.



"Comrade Mafnoff!" shrieked the maid, who was a Communist.



The black statue turned to a writhing black ghost. Or so it seemed to the servants. The whole man - they knew it was Serge Mafnoff, because the features of the all-black statue had been recognizable as his - appeared to turn into a cloud of sepia vapor.



A black ghost, it was like. It swirled and changed shape a little, then came swaying toward them, a ghostly, disembodied, unreal monstrosity.