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

Straight toward them, it floated.



The cook screeched and threw more crimson over the walls and floor. But the chauffeur snatched a pair of heavy pliers out of his hip pocket and hurled them at the black horror.



The pliers went through the thing and dented the plaster of the opposite wall.



Then, suddenly, impossibly, and before their eyes, the black thing silently vanished. It did not spread; it seemed to fade, disintegrate, go into nothingness.



"I killed it!" the chauffeur screamed.



Then the only sound in the room, for long moments, was the frightened rattling of the breath in their throats. The cook's hand dripped.



They were looking for some trace of Serge Mafnoff. Hurting their eyes with looking. And seeing nothing.



"I - I couldn't - have killed him," the chauffeur croaked.



"Ugh!" the butler said.



They were all primed for the next shriek. It came from downstairs, a man's voice in a long peal of imperative supplication and terror.



The cook barked out something hoarse, and fainted. She fell directly in the center of the door, just inside the attic den which was Serge Mafnoff's study.



The other servants left her lying there and raced downstairs to find out who had given that last scream, and what about.