"Tom Purdom-A Proper Place To Live" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

hung from the second floor and a crowd was gathered around an iron door that was big enough to admit
a good-sized carriage. At the next intersection, about thirty paces from the iron door, another crowd had
gathered around a man in a black robe who was shouting something from a portable pulpit. A couple of
dozen younger people were hopping and bouncing in time to the storm of sound coming from William
Tyler's second floor window, but most of the citizens on the street seemed to be shouting at each other or
listening to the pulpiteer.
In the center of the crowd in front of the mechanic's shop, with his back pressed against the door, a
stooped, gray-haired man was scowling at a phalanx of waving fists. Sir Harold and his lady had both
blocked their ears with wadded-up handkerchiefs but it was obvious Mr. Tyler and his opponents were
saying a few words about the rights of Englishmen.
Sir Harold removed the handkerchief from his right ear, so he could use his right hand, and managed
to stretch his arm through the crowd and offer the mechanic his card. It was a long reach, and the
shoulders and heads bobbing in front of them should have created an impenetrable obstacle, but this was,
after all, his London.
"I would appreciate it if I could speak to you in private," Sir Harold shouted through the fifteenth
repetition of the tune thundering out of the second floor window. "I am extremely interested in some of
the possibilities created by your invention."
Mr. Tyler's brow furrowed. He had indeed been discussing the rights of Englishmen with two
red-faced men with very large backs. It took him a moment to change gears and turn his attention to the
polite, rather diffident man who had apparently handed him a card across a distance that would have
created a problem for someone who had arms as long as crutches.
"Excuse me," Sir Harold said. "Please excuse me. Thank you."
"If you don't mind," Lady Millicent said. "Thank you. That's very kind of you."
The crowd parted before the gentle pressure of Sir Harold's walking stick and Lady Millicent's
parasol. Two smiling, good-natured faces slipped between Mr. Tyler and the two men who had firm
opinions on the rights of Englishmen, a few vaguely promising, not quite intelligible words reached the
mechanic's ear, a gentle hand rested on his shoulder, and he and his two companions disappeared
through the narrow wooden door that led to his private quarters.
The apparatus had been installed in the parlor on the second floor, near the top of the stairs. They had
started climbing as soon as Lady Millicent had closed the private door and made sure it was securely
locked. A child who looked as if she were about nine years old was sitting at the keyboard with a happy
smile on her face, playing -- once again -- the same tune they had been hearing for the last ten minutes.
Sir Harold gestured at the instrument. "It might be easier to talk if...."
The mechanic frowned again, but there was, as Sir Harold knew, very little chance he would be able
to deny the request. The polite, carefully dressed gentleman standing in front of him was, after all, a
Tudor-Smith. And the tall, gentle-faced woman eyeing him through her pince-nez was not only a
Tudor-Smith but was also, in her own right, by descent, a Cuddleby. Of the Puddleby Cuddlebys.
Mr. Tyler's daughter insisted on playing the last few bars of her tune but after that she threw up her
hands in a final grand gesture and scrambled onto her bench and started curtsying. Sir Harold and his
lady straightened up as if they had just put down a pair of heavy packages. The voices of the people
standing in the street reached them for the first time.
Lady Millicent applauded politely. Sir Harold stepped up to the instrument without a pause and
dropped to a crouch beside the arrangement of pipes and levers on the left side.
"I think we should start by having you show me how it works," Sir Harold said. "If you wouldn't mind,
that is."
The mechanic's face lit up. He stepped forward with his eves beaming and in a moment he was
crouching beside Sir Harold and showing him how the machine derived its mechanical power, just as the
newspaper writer had stated, "from its ingenious use of the high pressure water system which has been a
standard feature of London life for the last half decade." Water from the street, it seemed, was passed
through a series of ingeniously shaped tubes which actually tripled its pressure even before it entered the