Ramage's Diamond

Начало книги

There was a faint smell of oil, turpentine and beeswax in the shop, and while an assistant scurried off to fetch the owner Ramage glanced first at the sporting guns in the racks round the walls and then at the pairs of pistols nestling in their mahogany cases which almost covered one end of the counter.

The guns accounted for the smell of oil. Then he noticed the polished floor of narrow wooden tiles, laid in a herringbone design to take advantage of the grain pattern. Turpentine and beeswax - the gun-maker used the same polish on his floor as he did on the stocks of his guns.

His father gestured round the shop with his cane. 'My first pistol came from here nearly fifty years ago. This fellow's father owned it then, and my father was one of his early customers.'

Ramage looked at the tall figure of the Admiral. His face was lined now and his hair was grey, yet he was erect, his brown eyes alert and Iooking out on the world with amused tolerance from under bushy eyebrows. He pictured his father as a shy young midshipman - a 'younker' nervously choosing a pistol, and no doubt anxious to be off to the sword cutler's to complete his martial purchases before joining his first ship.

Читать дальше →