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| Even in his state of near-hysteria, Klaus Detterick hesitated at first to follow it. | Даже в состоянии, близком к истерике, Клаус Деттерик засомневался, идти ли следом. |
| It wasn't fear of the man or men who had taken his daughters; it was fear of following the abductor's backtrail... of going off in exactly the wrong direction at a time when every second might count. | Он не испытывал страха перед теми, кто похитил его дочерей, он боялся, что, преследуя похитителя по его следам, может пойти в обратном направлении и потерять время, когда дорога каждая секунда. |
| Howie solved that dilemma by plucking a shred of yellow cotton cloth from a bush growing just beyond the edge of the dooryard. | Хови разрешил его сомнения, сняв с куста, сразу за территорией двора, клочок желтой материи. |
| Klaus was shown this same scrap of cloth as he sat on the witness stand, and began to weep as he identified it as a piece of his daughter Kathe's sleeping-shorts. | Клаусу показали этот клочок, когда он сидел за столом свидетелей, и он, заплакав, сказал, что узнал в нем клочок пижамных шортиков своей дочери Кейт. |
| Twenty yards beyond it, hanging from the jutting finger of a juniper shrub, they found a piece of faded green cloth that matched the nightie Cora had been wearing when she kissed her ma and pa goodnight. | Шагов через двадцать они сняли с ветки можжевельника кусочек бледно-зеленой ткани, такой же, как ночная рубашка Коры, в которой она целовала маму и папу перед сном. |
| The Dettericks, father and son, set off at a near-run with their guns held in front of them, as soldiers do when crossing contested ground under heavy fire. | Отец и сын Деттерики пустились почти бегом с винтовками наперевес, как солдаты в атаке под сильным огнем. |
| If I wonder at anything that happened that day, it is that the boy, chasing desperately after his father (and often in danger of being left behind completely), never fell and put a bullet in Klaus Detterick's back. | Что меня удивляет из всего случившегося в тот день, так это то, что мальчик, отчаянно бегущий за отцом (а он ведь мог совсем отстать и потеряться), не упал и не пустил пулю в спину Клауса Деттерика. |
| The farmhouse was on the exchange-another sign to the neighbors that the Dettericks were prospering, at least moderately, in disastrous times-and Marjorie used Central to call as many of her neighbors that were also on the exchange as she could, telling them of the disaster which had fallen like a lightning-stroke out of a clear sky, knowing that each call would produce overlapping ripples, like pebbles tossed rapidly into a stilly pond. |