Laurie King Mary Russel 07 The Game

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certain maiming, if not death outright, for the object that fell where we had
been standing was probably three hundredweight of metal and wood.
What is it? I asked Holmes.
I fear to ask, he said, sounding more disgusted than troubled. I glanced
over and saw that he was looking, not at the tangle of pipes and boards, but
at his hands, smeared with some dark and noxious substance. He bent to
appropriate a corner of the dusty awning cloth, scrubbing at his fingers.
I meant the thing that fell.
He ran his eyes over the object that had so nearly ended the eminent career
of Sherlock Holmes, then lifted his gaze upwards, as half the people around us
were doing. One dusty beam still clung to the rough mud-brick wall some
twenty-five feet above, with a clear line of holes and dirt showing where the
rest of the thing had been. A glance down the street showed a number of
similar makeshift balconies, bits of wood and metal tacked onto the walls high
above street level, all of them strung with drying laundry, decorated with
petrol tins overflowing with flowers and herbs, furnished with cushions and
rugs, and stacked high with various household goods not wanted inside. This
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one had linked to its apartment by way of a flimsy door, now opening onto thin
air. And as we gazed upwards the door did open; the face of a horrified woman
looked straight out, then down at us. She gaped down at the crowded street
before belatedly realising that there were strangers looking back at her; she
whipped her head-scarf across her face, gave us one last white-eyed look, and
slammed the door, dislodging a few more scraps of timber and dust.
Holmes waded through the wreckage, searching for the end pieces of the
balcony. I joined him, our search somewhat hindered by the determination of
the carpet-seller to keep people away from his now-vulnerable wares. I found
Holmes fingering a pair of iron bolts, both of them old, one bent into a sharp
angle, the other sheared off. Neither showed any sign of a saw s teeth.
We must examine the wall above, he told me, and raised his voice in Arabic
to ask how we might gain access to the above apartment. This took forever,
first to brush off the teary gratitude of the young assistant whose son we had
preserved and then to find a person who could show us the relevant corkscrew
stairway. And once at the top, we were halted by the custom of the land, when
Holmes would have gone within an apartment housing women alone.
In the end, I suggested instead that I might be allowed to venture within.
The shopkeeper s wife had by that time appeared from their nearby house and
followed us up the stairs to deliver her thanks. As soon as she understood
what we were about, she added her voice to mine, begging that they grant the
request of this thrice-blessed if baffling foreigner. The women within knew
perhaps six words of Arabic I wasn t even certain what their native language
was but they gave in. With a wide smile and many appreciative noises over the
squalling, snot-nosed,kohl-eyed infant one of them clutched, I crossed the two
rooms to the door that now gave out onto the bazaar.
Stretched out on the floor with my head and shoulders extending into thin
air, I failed to spot any obvious saw-marks, merely holes in the walls where
bolts had once stood. I ignored the fearful noises of the women behind me, the
heftiest of whom had thrown herself across my ankles lest I fly into space,
and I shaded my eyes to squint at the building on the opposite side of the
street. Something odd there: a gash in the wall beneath a window, fairly
fresh. I made to stand, found I couldn t move, and had to plead with the woman
on my legs to allow me upright, which took a while. Before I left the
apartment, I looked around for some heavy piece of furniture, finding a sort
of divan that weighed nearly as much as I did, which I wrestled across the
room to block the rickety door. Then, exchanging mutually incomprehensible
pleasantries with the gabbling women and thanking them for the various sticky [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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