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

with the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinary
heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to
perpetual darkness. Could be worth a try, I think. Got some good vaults
in the college that could be turned over to the purpose. I think I
showed you round them once, hmmm? Nice brickwork.'
All this came as something of a relief to his guest. It was the
first indication his host had given that he had the faintest
recollection who he was. Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius
Professor of Chronology, or 'Reg' as he insisted on being called had a
memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra
Birdwing Butterfly, in that it was colourful, flitted prettily hither
and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct.
When he had telephoned with the invitation a few days previously, he
had seemed extremely keen to see his former pupil, and yet when Richard
had arrived this evening, a little on the late side, admittedly, the
Professor had thrown open the door apparently in anger, had started in
surprise on seeing Richard, demanded to know if he was having emotional
problems, reacted in annoyance to being reminded gently that it was now
ten years since he had been Richard's college tutor, and finally agreed
that Richard had indeed come for dinner, whereupon he, the Professor,
had started talking rapidly and at length about the history of the
college architecture, a sure sign that his mind was elsewhere entirely.
'Reg' had never actually taught Richard, he had only been his
college tutor, which meant in short that he had had charge of his
general welfare, told him when the exams were and not to take drugs,
and so on. Indeed, it was not entirely clear if Reg had ever taught
anybody at all and what, if anything, he would have taught them. His
professorship was an obscure one, to say the least, and since he
dispensed with his lecturing duties by the simple and time-honoured
technique of presenting all his potential students with an exhaustive
list of books that he knew for a fact had been out of print for thirty
years, then flying into a tantrum if they failed to find them, no one
had ever discovered the precise nature of his academic discipline. He
had, of course, long ago taken the precaution of removing the only
extant copies of the books on his reading list from the university and
college libraries, as a result of which he had plenty of time to, well,
to do whatever it was he did.
Since Richard had always managed to get on reasonably well with the
old fruitcake, he had one day plucked up courage to ask him what,
exactly, the Regius Professorship of Chronology was. It had been one of
those light summery days when the world seems about to burst with
pleasure at simply being itself, and Reg had been in an
uncharacteristically forthcoming mood as they had walked over the
bridge where the River Cam divided the older parts of the college from
the newer.
'Sinecure, my dear fellow, an absolute sinecure,' he had beamed. 'A
small amount of money for a very small, or shall we say non-existent,
amount of work. That puts me permanently just ahead of the game, which
is a comfortable if frugal place to spend your life. I recommend it.'
He leaned over the edge of the bridge and started to point out a