Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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So the gray car crept nightward in the dark and there was no life stirred as it went by…. As the still ocean paths before the shark in starred and glittering waterways, beauty-high, the moon-swathed trees divided, pair on pair, while flapping nightbirds cried across the air….

A moment by an inn of lamps and shades, a yellow inn under a yellow moon—then silence, where crescendo laughter fades … the car swung out again to the winds of June, mellowed the shadows where the distance grew, then crushed the yellow shadows into blue….

They jolted to a stop, and Amory peered up, startled. A woman was standing beside the road, talking to Alec at the wheel. Afterward he remembered the harpy effect that her old kimono gave her, and the cracked hollowness of her voice as she spoke:

“You Princeton boys?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s one of you killed here, and two others about dead.”

“My God!”

“Look!” She pointed and they gazed in horror. Under the full light of a roadside arc-light lay a form, face downward in a widening circle of blood.