"Richard Wilson - Mother to the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Richard)

heavier than the pistol he carried. Big-bore stuff, whatever
they called it.
Rolfe was admiring an elephant gun in the fantastic store
(Hemingway had shopped here, and probably Martin and
Osa Johnson and Frank Buck and others from the lost past)
when he remembered another sound he'd heard from the top
of the Empire State Building. It had puzzled him, but now
he could identify it. It had been the trumpeting of an elephant.
An elephant in Manhattan? The circus wasn't in town He
knew then, but for the moment he pushed aside the thought
and its implications.
After he had picked out the guns, and a wicked gas-
operated underwater javelin for good measure, he outfitted
himself in safari clothes. Khaki shorts and high socks, a big-
pocketed bush jacket, a sun helmet. Hurrah for Captain
Spalding! He looked a true Mamnan, he thought, humming
the song Groucho had sung and admiring himself in a full-
length mirror.
He took a cartridge belt and boxes of shells and first-aid
and water-purification kits and a trapper's knife and a light-
weight trail ax and a compass and binoculars and snowshoes
and deerskin gloves and a tough pair of boots. He staggered
out into Madison Avenue and dumped everything into the
back of the cream-colored Lincoln convertible he was driving
that day.
The trumpeting of the elephant had come from the Central
Park Zoo, of course. He drove in from Fifth Avenue and
parked near the restaurant opposite the sea lions' pool. He
could see three of them lying quietly on a stone ledge, just
above the water, watching him. He wondered when they'd
last been fed.
First, though, he went to the administration building and
let himself in with lock-picking tools. He had become adept
at the burglary trade. He found a set of what seemed to be
master keys and tried them first at the aviary. They worked.
The names of the birds, on the faded wooden plaques,
were as colorful as their plumage. There were a Papuan lory,
a sulphur-crested cockatoo, the chiffchaff and kookaburra
bird, laughing jackass and motmot, chachalaca, drongo and
poor old puffin. He opened their cages and watched their
tentative, gaudy passage to freedom.
A pelican waddled out comically, suspicion in its round
eyes. He ducked a hawk and cowered from a swift, fierce
eagle. An owl lingered, blinking, until he shooed it toward
the doors. He left to the last two brooding vultures, hesitating
to free creatures so vile. But there was a role for scavengers,
too. He opened their cage and ran, to get outdoors before
they did.
 After the cacophony of the aviary, he was surprised at the
silence as he neared the monkey house. He'd have to be