"Adams, Douglas - Dirk Gently 01 - Holistic Detective Agency" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

paper clips up your nose.'
Richard stared at him.
'Allow me to demonstrate,' said Reg, and leaning across the desk he
pulled from Richard's nose a chain of eleven paper clips and a small
rubber swan.
'Ah, the real culprit,' he said, holding up the swan. 'They come in
cereal packets, you know, and cause no end of trouble. Well, I'm glad
we've had this little chat, my dear fellow. Please feel free to disturb
me again if you have any more such problems.'
Needless to say, Richard didn't.
Richard glanced around the table to see if there was anybody else he
recognised from his time at the college.
Two places away to the left was the don who had been Richard's
Director of Studies in English, who showed no signs of recognising him
at all. This was hardly surprising since Richard had spent his three
years here assiduously avoiding him, often to the extent of growing a
beard and pretending to be someone else.
Next to him was a man whom Richard had never managed to identify.
Neither, in fact, had anyone else. He was thin and vole-like and had
the most extraordinarily long bony nose -- it really was very, very
long and bony indeed. In fact it looked a lot like the controversial
keel which had helped the Australians win the America's Cup in 1983,
and this resemblance had been much remarked upon at the time, though
not of course to his face. No one had said anything to his face at all.
No one.
Ever.
Anyone meeting him for the first time was too startled and
embarrassed by his nose to speak, and the second time was worse because
of the first time, and so on. Years had gone by now, seventeen in all.
In all that time he had been cocooned in silence. In hall it had long
been the habit of the college servants to position a separate set of
salt, pepper and mustard on either side of him, since no one could ask
him to pass them, and to ask someone sitting on the other side of him
was not only rude but completely impossible because of his nose being
in the way.
The other odd thing about him was a series of gestures he made and
repeated regularly throughout every evening. They consisted of tapping
each of the fingers of his left hand in order, and then one of the
fingers of his right hand. He would then occasionally tap some other
part of his body, a knuckle, an elbow or a knee. Whenever he was forced
to stop this by the requirements of eating he would start blinking each
of his eyes instead, and occasionally nodding. No one, of course, had
ever dared to ask him why he did this, though all were consumed with
curiosity.
Richard couldn't see who was sitting beyond him.
In the other direction, beyond Reg's deathly neighbour, was Watkin,
the Classics Professor, a man of terrifying dryness and oddity. His
heavy rimless glasses were almost solid cubes of glass within which his
eyes appeared to lead independent existences like goldfish. His nose
was straight enough and ordinary, but beneath it he wore the same beard