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.""That's nothing to laugh about," said the little man earn-estly."If there'sany justice in this world, a truly honest man ought to be specially favored bythe gods.There aren't enough of them so's it would make a great upset in theordinary laws of chance.Believe me, sir, I feel quite privi-leged to have metone like yourself."In the Saint's soul was burgeoning a sensation of bliss al-most too ecstaticto be borne.To have encountered a gambit of such classic if corny purity on aNew York sidewalk, and to have helped it to develop in some tawdry Broadwaybar, would have been only a mechanically enjoyable routine.To meet it besidethe Rogue River and continue it in a fishing camp cottage gave it the samespice of the miraculous that would have been experienced by a shipwreckedgourmet on discovering that the vessel stranded on the island with him hadbeen laden to the Plimsoll line with a cargo of the finest canned and bottleddelicacies that France could ex-port.It gave him a dizzy feeling of being thespoiled pet of a whole brigade of guardian angels to an extent that Mr Quigg'sinterpretation did not even begin to justify.But according to the protocolwhich he had once himself enun-ciated, he was categorically prohibited fromleaping up and down and uttering shrill cries of jubilation.The most he.could permit himself at this point was to wriggle modestly."Oh, hell," he said, exerting some effort not to ham it into Aw, heck."Don'tlet's go overboard about this.""But I mean it," said Mr Quigg."If I only had a friend that I knew wasabsolutely honest, it'd make all the differ-ence in the world to my life.""What sort of highbinders do you have in your circle, Ollie?""Just ordinary people.They wouldn't dream of cheating you out a dollar, butif they had a chance to chisel a few thousands without the slightest risk ofgetting in trouble I wouldn't expect them to die before they'd do it."Mr Quigg put down his glass and picked up a knife, but it was quickly apparentthat the only butchery he in-tended was to be performed on his fish, whichwere laid out on a newspaper on the draining board."Will you excuse me if I finish this job?" he said, and continued with thecleaning which Simon's knock had ob-viously interrupted.He was quick and neatat it."It's a crime not to eat trout absolutely fresh." He pursed his lips ina final survey of his dressed-out catch."Mmm this is more than I can eattonight.I've such a small appetite.I think I'll preserve a couple of them."The unorthodox word, combined with the startling contradiction of what he hadsaid only three sentences before, should have been enough to hold anyone'sattention on what he proceeded to do, which proved to be rewardinglyextra-ordinary.Perched on one of the kitchen chairs was an aluminum coffer which at firstsight could have been taken for some kind of portable icebox, roughly cubicalin shape and measuring about two feet on any side, until you noticed that itwas plugged in to an electric outlet and had a row of dials and switches alonga lower panel which suggested a television set with no screen.Then when MrQuigg opened a door in one side it looked more like an oven.He slipped twotrout into a self-sealing plastic bag, and put the bag in the box, andtwiddled switches and dials.Whereupon the cabinet ceased to resemble anything Simon had ever seen except aprop from a Hollywood "sci-ence" movie.A thin high-pitched humming came fromit, and its interior glowed with a weird fluorescence.Violet ribbons ofenergy like cold, crawling streaks of lightning bridged the inside and writhedup and down between its walls like tortured disembodied snakes.And on thecentral griddle where Mr Quigg had placed it, the transparent plastic packagePage 63ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlwas bathed in a soft rosy light that seemed to emanate from the troutthemselves.Simon Templar had seen a fine assortment of Contrap-tions in his time, fromtransmuters that made gold and diamonds out of a handful of common chemicals,to ma-chines that printed perfect replicas of British banknotes or UnitedStates greenbacks as fast as you could turn a handle; but never before had heseen a gizzmo that gizzed with such original and soul-satisfying pyrotechnicaleffects."What is that?" he demanded, and did not have to fake a fragment of hisyokel's entrancement."It's my Preservator," said Mr Quigg matter-of-factly."I invented it.Icouldn't explain it to you very easily, un-less you happen to be very well upon electronics and radia-tion theory.And then I'd be afraid of telling youtoo much, perhaps.But it preserves anything you treat with it by totalsterilization, without chemicals or refrigeration." He flicked another switch,the slow fireworks died down, and he with-drew the plastic envelope, fromwhich the pink luminosity had already faded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]