Цитата из книги «Иоганн Кабал, детектив» Джонатан Говардпоказать все Добавить
In all fairness, Cabal’s vengefulness was as much a product of his lifestyle as his humours; in his career to date, he had long since discovered that rivals and enemies rarely simply shook their heads and wandered out of his life, older and wiser. Instead, they were inclined to go off to a dark corner and fester away on new plots and schemes that would explode all over his life like acidic pus. Johannes Cabal had far better things to do with his time than spend it dodging acidic pus, so he had realised early on that the best way to avoid assorted blowhards and rapscallions bursting through the door declaiming ‘We meet again, Mister Cabal!,’ or some such nonsense, was simply to kill them the first time around while they were handy and vulnerable. It wasn’t a perfect solution, he had to admit; his rivals and enemies tended to have access to the same sorts of forbidden arcane arts and unwholesome sciences that he did, and so having them sometimes come crawling out of their graves, intent on inflicting a messy postmortem revenge, was not unknown.
Иоганн Кабал, ученый, скептик и некромант, снова в бегах, правда на этот раз его преследуют правительственные агенты. Под чужим именем он проникает на борт «Принцессы Гортензии», пассажирского дирижабля, направляющегося в другую страну. Кабал мечтает о спокойном путешествии без всяких происшествий, но вынужденная праздность и рутина дурно сказываются на его планах. Когда на борту погибает один из пассажиров и обстоятельства его смерти наводят на мысли об убийстве, Кабал решает заняться...