"Brian Lumley - Titus Crow 1 - The Burrowers Beneath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

wearily into a chair behind his great desk.
Now, I have said that I gazed unbelievingly about the study: well, let it be
understood that Titus Crow's study (incorporating as it does his magnificent
occult library), while yet being the apple of his eye, is more often than not
the scene of at least a minimal activity, when my friend involves himself
within those strange spheres of research which are his speciality; and let it
be further understood that I was quite used to seeing the place in less than
completely tidy order - but never before had I seen anything like the apparent
chaos which reigned in that room on this occasion!
Maps, charts, and atlases lay open and in places overlapping, littering the
floor wall to shelved wall, so that I had to step on certain of them to reach
a chair; various files, many of them fastened open at marked or paper-clipped
places, stood at one end of the cluttered desk and also upon a small
occasional table; numbered newspaper cuttings were everywhere, many of them
discoloured and plainly faded with age, others very recent; a great notebook,
its pages covered top to bottom with careless or hurried scrawlings, lay open
at my feet, and rare and commonplace tomes alike on various obscure or little
known semi-mythological, anthropological, and archaeological themes were
stacked willy-nilly in one corner of the room at the foot of Crow's great
four-handed grandfather clock. The whole was a scene of total disorder, and
one that whetted my curiosity to a point where my first astonished outburst
sprang as naturally to my lips as might any commonplace inquiry in less
bizarre surroundings:
'Titus! What on earth . . . ? You look as though you haven't had a wink of
sleep in a week - and the state of this place!' Again I stared about the room,
at the apparent disruption of all previous normality.
'Oh, I've been getting my sleep, de Marigny,' Crow answered unconvincingly,
'though admittedly not so much as ordinarily. No, this tiredness of mine is as
much a mental as a physical fatigue, I fear. But for heaven's sake, what a
puzzle, and one that must be solved!' He swirled his brandy in its glass, the
tired action belying his momentarily energetic and forceful mode of
expression.
'You know,' I said, satisfied for the moment to let Crow enlighten me in his
own time and way, 'I rather fancied someone could use a bit of help, even
before I got your note, I mean. I don't know what's been going on, I haven't
the faintest inkling what this "puzzle" of yours is, but do you know? Why,
this is the first time in weeks that
I've felt at all like tackling anything! I've been under some sort of black
cloud, a peculiar mood of despair and strange ennui, and then along came your
note.'
Crow looked at me with his head on one side and ruefully smiled. 'Oh? Then I'm
sorry, de Marigny, for unless I'm very much mistaken your "peculiar mood of
despair" is due to repeat itself in very short order!' His smile disappeared
almost immediately. 'But this is nothing frivolous I've got myself into,
Henri, no indeed.'
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of his tall chair and leaned
forward over the desk. 'De Marigny, if I'm correct in what I suspect, then at
this very moment the world is faced with an unthinkable, an unbelievable
horror. But I believe in it ... and there were others before me who believed!'
'Were others, Titus?' I caught something of the extra weight he had placed on