"7_Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

of light to another, shivering, leaving wraiths of breath which
folded themselves into the cold night behind them.
lt was seven o'clock. Many of the figures were heading for
the college dining hall which divided First Court from Second
Court, and from which warm light, reluctantly, streamed. Two
figures in particular seemed ill-matched. One, a young man, was
tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat
he walked a little like an affronted heron.
The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainly
restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to
escape from a sack. I-iis own age was on the older side of
completely indeterminate. If you picked a number at random, he
was probably a little older than that, but - well, it was
impossible to tell. Certainly his face was heavily lined, and
the small amount of hair that escaped from under his red
woollen skiing hat was thin, white, and had very much its own
ideas about how it wished to arrange itself. He too was muffled
inside a heavy coat, but over it he wore a billowing gown with
very faded purple trim, the badge ofhis unique and peculiar
academic office.
As they walked the older man was doing all the talking. He
was pointing at items of interest along the way, despite the
fact that it was too dark to see any of them. The younger man
was saying "Ah yes," and "Really? How interesting..." and
"Well, well, well," and "Good heavens." His head bobbed
seriously.
They entered, not through the main entrance to the hall,
but through a small doorway on the east side of the court. This
led to the Senior Combination Room and a dark-panelled anteroom
where the Fellows of the college assembled to slap their hands
and make "brrrrrr" noises before making their way through their
own entrance to the High Table.
They were late and shook off their coats hurriedly. This
was complicated for the older man by the necessity first of
taking off his professorial gown, and then of putting it back
on again once. his coat was off, then of stuffing his hat in
his coat pocket, then of wondering where he'd put his scarf,
and then of realising that he hadn't brought it, then of
fishing in his coat pocket for his handkerchief, then of
fishing in his other coat pocket for his spectacles, and
finally of finding them quite unexpectedly wrapped in his
scarf, which it turned out he had brought after all but hadn't
been wearing despite the damp and bitter wind blowing in like a
witch's breath from across the fens.
He bustled the younger man into the hall ahead of him and
they took the last two vacant seats at the High Table, braving
a flurry of frowns and raised eyebrows for interrupting the
Latin grace to do so.
Hall was full tonight. It was always more popular with the
undergraduates in the colder months. More unusually, the hall