Пользователь - WORLD'S END

Captain Bragescu, of course, was enraptured by such a performance. Pierre, the chauffeur, ran and got the target for them. You could see parts of the circle made by each bullet, but there wasn't any hole that wasn't part of one big hole. "I'll take that back to Bucharest with me!" said the captain.

"Wait," replied Bub; "I'll make you a few more." So they tacked up another target, and Bub took a different gun and did it again; he was ready to do it as long as the ammunition held out.

But the officer was convinced. "C'est bon" he said. He wouldn't be too enthusiastic, for it was a matter of business, but he repeated several times: "Oui, c'est bon."

He tried it himself, and spattered the target all over with his shots. Bub showed him how to swing up the gun, and how to keep it from jerking, and then he did better. Robbie took his turn. He knew all about shooting, of course, and apologized to the captain for being too good; it was just a matter of understanding this remarkable weapon, he said.

Then Lanny took his turn. The army weapon was too heavy for him, but he had brought along his own thirty-two. Lanny was pretty good, but nobody seemed really good after Bub Smith. When, the captain learned that Bub had been a cowboy, he exclaimed:

"Ca s'explique! I have seen them in the cinema. We need men who can ride and shoot like that in Rumania. We are troubled with mountaineers who don't like to pay taxes."

V

They went home to lunch, and Beauty had some friends in; but you could see that Beauty herself was company enough for Bragescu. He could hardly take his eyes off this delicate creation in pink and cream and gold. She, being used to that sort of thing, was kind, but sedate and never the least bit flirtatious. Lanny always got plenty of motherly attention at such times. He was too young to understand these subtleties, but he played up to her all the same, and they made a sweet and sentimental pair.

It was the Baroness de la Tourette who was supposed to do the entertaining of the officer. Sophie Timmons had been her maiden name, and her father owned a chain of hardware factories in several towns of the Middle West. He sent his only daughter lots of money, but never enough for her husband the baron, who lived in Paris and had very expensive tastes. The baroness had one of those henna heads, and had what you might call a henna laugh; she talked fast and loud, half in French and half in English, and was considered to be the life of every party. Lanny was too young to observe that while she chattered her eyes would roam restlessly, as if her mind were not entirely on her work. She was his mother's best friend, and had a kind heart in spite of all her smartness.

The captain was taken off by Robbie to have the drawings of the Budd automatic pistol explained to him. Afterward they all went for a sail, and watched the sun sink into the Mediterranean; then they dressed and went to Cannes to dine at a fashionable resort, and later came home to play poker. Lanny was just getting into bed when he heard them come in and settle themselves at the table, and he peeked in at the door for a bit.

They made a pretty sight in front of the big open fire of crackling pine; the men in evening dress, except the Rumanian in a blue and gold dress uniform; the ladies in lovely soft dresses cut halfway down their smooth white backs. They had picked up friends at the restaurant, including Lord and Lady Eversham-Watson. She was another rich American who had married a title, but she had used better judgment; his lordship was a large, solid, and rather dull gentleman past middle age, but he admired his gay wife and liked to see her shine in company. She was a talkative little woman who managed him and made it acceptable by joking; her money came out of a Kentucky whisky known as "Petries' Peerless."

Lanny had never been taught to play poker, but had watched it sometimes. They might still be playing when he woke up in the morning, and would go on playing most of the day; he was used to the sight of Petries' Peerless and soda bottles on the side table, and half-empty glasses, and the not very pleasant odor of stale tobacco smoke, and little ashtrays filled with stubs. He was used to hearing how "rotten" his father was as a poker player, and would smile to himself, for this was one of the secrets which he shared with Robbie, who used as much skill in losing as other people did in trying to win.

Always to the right man, of course! This time Captain Bragescu would be the lucky one. Robbie, bland and smiling, would drav cards every time, and wait until the captain gave signs of having a strong hand, then raise him, and finally quit and drop his cards without showing them. After this had happened a few times the captain would realize that it was safe for him to bet heavily, and when Robbie would propose to raise the limit, he would agree. This would go on for hours, until the lucky officer had most of the chips piled in front of him, and would think that he owned the world. At the end Robbie would say: "It's amazing how you've mastered our American game." It was such a decent way to arrange a contract for guns that the captain could not fail to appreciate it. The guns were all right, of course, and the Rumanian army would be safe from the Bulgarians and able to capture the rebel mountaineers and collect the taxes.

VI

Robbie motored to Marseille to meet some member of his family who was coming from Egypt, and Beauty went to dance at a ball which a friend was giving in one of the white marble palaces on the heights above Nice. It would last until morning, and she would sleep there and return later. Lanny settled himself to the reading of a well-worn novel which somebody had picked up on a bookstall and left in the house.

It was a story about slum life on the outskirts of an American industrial town. The district was known as the "Cabbage Patch," and in it lived an Irish washerwoman with a brood of children, all dreadfully poor, but so honest and good that it touched your heart. Lanny, whose heart was always being touched by one thing or another, found this the dearest and sweetest of stories. By next morning he was nearly through with it and, sitting in the warm sunshine of the court, with narcissus beds around him and a huge bougainvillaea throwing a purple mantle over the kitchen porch, he yearned to have been born in a slum, so that he might be so generous and kindhearted and hard-working and helpful to everybody around him.

There came a tinkling of the bell, and Lanny went to the front gate and was confronted by his Uncle Jesse, his mother's brother. Jesse Blackless was a painter of a sort - that is to say, he had a small income and didn't have to work. He lived in a fishing village some distance to the west, a place where "nobody ever went," as Beauty phrased it. But it was just as well, because Jesse didn't seem to care about visitors, nor they about him; he lived alone in a cottage which he had fixed up in his own fashion. Lanny had been there once, when Uncle Jesse was sick and his sister felt it necessary to pay a duty call, taking along a basket of delicacies. That had been two or three years ago, and the boy had a vague memory of soiled dishes, a frying pan on the center table, and half a room filled with unframed paintings.

The artist was a man of forty or so, wearing a sport shirt open at the neck, a pair of linen trousers, not very well pressed, and tennis shoes dusty from his walk. He wore no hat, and his hair was gone entirely from the top, so that the brown dome was like a bronze Buddha's. He looked old for his years, and had many wrinkles around his eyes; when he smiled his mouth went a little crooked. His manner was quizzical, which made you think he was laughing at you, which wasn't quite polite. Lanny didn't know what it was, but he had got the impression that there was something wrong about his Uncle Jesse; Beauty saw him rarely, and if Robbie spoke of him, it was in a way implying disapproval. All the boy knew definitely was that Uncle Jesse had had a studio in Paris, and that Beauty had been visiting him at the time she met Robbie and fell in love.