"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 139 - Weird Valley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The collector's name was John Winthrop Widman, and he was interested in witchcraft because his
ancestors had been prominent witch-chasers around old Salem, Hampton, Newberry, Hartford and
other centers of agitation.

After the hand-shaking and ribbing were over, Ham made a little speech in which he said, “Now look,
Winthrop, I know you're going to laugh at us, but try to keep your sense of perspective while you do it,
will you? We've been laughing at ourselves, and it isn't funny.”

The collector laughed as they had expected him to do when he heard about Methuselah Brown being
two hundred and ninety years old. He said, “This is a rib, of course.”

Monk and Ham agreed that it probably was a rib, that it couldn't very well be anything else, but would
John Winthrop Widman put the old man over the jumps, and unmask him now as a fellow who had never
been near Salem in 1674, or thereabouts.

“Where was your father buried?” was the first question.

“In the new burying-point on the South River bluff,” the old man said instantly. “He died in 1688. Name
was Sebastian Brown.”

The collector got out a book giving a listing of the headstones in Burying Point and Broad Street
cemeteries. He grimaced, and looked vaguely surprised.

“The name there?” Monk asked.

“Yes.”

“Doesn't prove anything,” Monk said. “Anybody can read history.”



JOHN WINTHROP WIDMAN seemed vaguely disturbed. He began firing questions: Did you know
Roger Conant? What color eyes did he have? Hair? Did he know John Winthrop, the governor? No?
Why not? What about Governor Phelps?

Methuselah Brown held up a hand.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “In 1674, I got snaked into court on a witchcraft charge myself, which I've
explained to Monk and Ham, here. Being tried like that made me mad.”

He grinned happily at them

“It made me so mad,” he added, that I cleared out of the Colony. I went to sea, and wound up in—well,
where I wound up is the part of the story that comes after you decide whether I'm telling the truth.”

Ham asked the collector, “Have you caught him in a lie yet?”

“No,” said Widman irritably. “But wait until I get going on him. This stuff I've been asking could all have
been dug out of encyclopedias or historical works on Salem.”

Old Methuselah Brown snorted. “Trot out your questions.”