"Arthur C. Doyle - The Poison Belt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur C)

"Bring oxygen!" The Professor, as I remembered him, had an
elephantine sense of humour capable of the most clumsy and
unwieldly gambollings. Was this one of those jokes which used to
reduce him to uproarious laughter, when his eyes would disappear
and he was all gaping mouth and wagging beard, supremely
indifferent to the gravity of all around him? I turned the words
over, but could make nothing even remotely jocose out of them.
Then surely it was a concise order--though a very strange one.
He was the last man in the world whose deliberate command I
should care to disobey. Possibly some chemical experiment was
afoot; possibly----Well, it was no business of mine to speculate
upon why he wanted it. I must get it. There was nearly an hour
before I should catch the train at Victoria. I took a taxi, and
having ascertained the address from the telephone book, I made
for the Oxygen Tube Supply Company in Oxford Street.

As I alighted on the pavement at my destination, two youths
emerged from the door of the establishment carrying an iron
cylinder, which, with some trouble, they hoisted into a waiting
motor-car. An elderly man was at their heels scolding and
directing in a creaky, sardonic voice. He turned towards me.
There was no mistaking those austere features and that goatee
beard. It was my old cross-grained companion, Professor Summerlee.

"What!" he cried. "Don't tell me that _you_ have had one of these
preposterous telegrams for oxygen?"

I exhibited it.

"Well, well! I have had one too, and, as you see, very much
against the grain, I have acted upon it. Our good friend is as
impossible as ever. The need for oxygen could not have been so
urgent that he must desert the usual means of supply and
encroach upon the time of those who are really busier than
himself. Why could he not order it direct?"

I could only suggest that he probably wanted it at once.

"Or thought he did, which is quite another matter. But it is
superfluous now for you to purchase any, since I have this
considerable supply."

"Still, for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring
oxygen too. It will be safer to do exactly what he tells me."

Accordingly, in spite of many grumbles and remonstrances from
Summerlee, I ordered an additional tube, which was placed with
the other in his motor-car, for he had offered me a lift to
Victoria.