"Chesterton, G.K. - The Wisdom of Father Brown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chesterton G.K)

In the scrappy back garden of the MacNabs which ran down towards the sand,
two black, barren-looking trees stood up like demon hands held up
in astonishment, and as Mrs MacNab ran down the street to meet them
with lean hands similarly spread, and her fierce face in shadow,
she was a little like a demon herself. The doctor and the priest
made scant reply to her shrill reiterations of her daughter's story,
with more disturbing details of her own, to the divided vows of vengeance
against Mr Glass for murdering, and against Mr Todhunter for being murdered,
or against the latter for having dared to want to marry her daughter,
and for not having lived to do it. They passed through the narrow passage
in the front of the house until they came to the lodger's door at the back,
and there Dr Hood, with the trick of an old detective, put his shoulder
sharply to the panel and burst in the door.

It opened on a scene of silent catastrophe. No one seeing it,
even for a flash, could doubt that the room had been the theatre
of some thrilling collision between two, or perhaps more, persons.
Playing-cards lay littered across the table or fluttered about
the floor as if a game had been interrupted. Two wine glasses stood
ready for wine on a side-table, but a third lay smashed
in a star of crystal upon the carpet. A few feet from it lay
what looked like a long knife or short sword, straight,
but with an ornamental and pictured handle, its dull blade just caught
a grey glint from the dreary window behind, which showed the black trees
against the leaden level of the sea. Towards the opposite corner
of the room was rolled a gentleman's silk top hat, as if it had
just been knocked off his head; so much so, indeed, that one almost looked
to see it still rolling. And in the corner behind it, thrown like a sack
of potatoes, but corded like a railway trunk, lay Mr James Todhunter,
with a scarf across his mouth, and six or seven ropes knotted round
his elbows and ankles. His brown eyes were alive and shifted alertly.

Dr Orion Hood paused for one instant on the doormat and drank in
the whole scene of voiceless violence. Then he stepped swiftly
across the carpet, picked up the tall silk hat, and gravely put it
upon the head of the yet pinioned Todhunter. It was so much too large
for him that it almost slipped down on to his shoulders.

"Mr Glass's hat," said the doctor, returning with it and peering
into the inside with a pocket lens. "How to explain the absence
of Mr Glass and the presence of Mr Glass's hat? For Mr Glass is not a
careless man with his clothes. That hat is of a stylish shape and
systematically brushed and burnished, though not very new.
An old dandy, I should think."

"But, good heavens!" called out Miss MacNab, "aren't you going to
untie the man first?"

"I say `old' with intention, though not with certainty"
continued the expositor; "my reason for it might seem a little far-fetched.