"Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Stark Munro Letters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Arthur Conan)

Cullingworth, in his bull's bellow. "Perhaps you'll make
me," said the fellow, turning a contemptuous face over
his shoulder. Cullingworth closed his note-book, and
began to walk down on the tops of the desks to the
delight of the three hundred spectators. It was fine to
see the deliberate way in which he picked his way among
the ink bottles. As he sprang down from the last bench
on to the floor, his opponent struck him a smashing blow
full in the face. Cullingworth got his bulldog grip on
him, however, and rushed him backwards out of the class-
room. What he did with him I don't know, but there was
a noise like the delivery of a ton of coals; and the
champion of law and order returned, with the sedate
air of a man who had done his work. One of his eyes
looked like an over-ripe damson, but we gave him three
cheers as he made his way back to his seat. Then we went
on with the dangers of Placenta Praevia.

He was not a man who drank hard, but a little drink
would have a very great effect upon him. Then it was
that the ideas would surge from his brain, each more
fantastic and ingenious than the last. And if ever he
did get beyond the borderland he would do the most
amazing things. Sometimes it was the fighting instinct
that would possess him, sometimes the preaching, and
sometimes the comic, or they might come in succession,
replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his
companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer
little peculiarities with it. One of them was that he
could walk or run perfectly straight, but that there
always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon
his tracks and retraced his steps again. This had a
strange effect sometimes, as in the instance which I am
about to tell you.

Very sober to outward seeming, but in a frenzy
within, he went down to the station one night, and,
stooping to the pigeon-hole, he asked the ticket-clerk,
in the suavest voice, whether he could tell him how far
it was to London. The official put forward his face to
reply when Cullingworth drove his fist through the little
hole with the force of a piston. The clerk flew
backwards off his stool, and his yell of pain and
indignation brought some police and railway men to his
assistance. They pursued Cullingworth; but he, as active
and as fit as a greyhound, outraced them all, and
vanished into the darkness, down the long, straight
street. The pursuers had stopped, and were gathered in
a knot talking the matter over, when, looking up, they
saw, to their amazement, the man whom they were after,