"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 173 - Once Over Lightly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

sealing wax over a blazing match. Now the wax got soft, he jammed it against a strip of paper he was
sealing across the keyhole, and implanted the impression of a coin, which he took from his pocket, on the
soft wax.

He added, “The deceased is still in there. The Sheriff called in a crime laboratory guy from Los Angeles.
The expert can't get here until this afternoon. I'm sealing the suite meantime. What did you want?
Anything out of the room? If so, you can't have it.”

“I just wanted to know what arrangements had been made about the body,” I said.

“No arrangements. The arrangements we hope to make is to put the pinch on somebody for murder. The
Sheriff said that. The arranging is his job, and I'm glad it is. Me, I would be baffled.”

He didn't sound much like a native of the desert, so he probably was. He said his name was Gilbert. He
showed me the coin he was using to seal-mark the wax. It was an early California gold piece, worth
about ten times face value as a collector's item, he said. It was his pocket piece. Then he said he would
finish waxing the lock in a minute, then why shouldn't we have a drink?

I said no, thanks, and left.

Now I wasn't angry. I was getting a little scared. I had been put out with Doc Savage because he hadn't
jumped to our aid, but that had evaporated. The anger had drained out of me, and the hole had filled up
with something that could get a little worse and be terror.

I went to our room. Glacia was sitting in a chair, her purse open on her lap and both her hands in the
purse.

“You feeling better, honey?” I asked.

She took her hands out of the purse. She was a trifle clumsy doing so, and a small blue .25-caliber
automatic pistol slid out on her lap. She had been sitting there holding it. Gripping the gun and watching
the door.

“I feel all right,” she said.

She didn't look it—her gay, crisp, alert, predatory blondness was awry. She was like a china doll that
someone had been carrying in his pocket.

“Who were you going to shoot?” I asked.

She jerked visibly. “Nobody. Don't be ridiculous.” She jabbed the gun back into the purse, and threw
words out. “Where have you been? Why did you run off and leave me?”

“Baby,” I said, “you'd better not hold out on me any longer.”

Her head came up, and her eyes tried to meet mine, but couldn't. “Don't be such a fool,” she mumbled.

It was obvious that she wasn't going to open up. I didn't pick at her, because it would have done no
good. I dropped in a chair and waited. Glacia got hold of herself with an effort—you could see her doing
it, like a sparrow drinking water. She would look at me, take an intangible drink of what she probably