"Г.К.Честертон. The Club of Queer Trades " - читать интересную книгу автора

"Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose you passed
through silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into an
open and deserted space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld
one dressed as a ballet girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And
suppose you looked, and saw it was a man disguised. And suppose
you looked again, and saw it was Lord Kitchener. What would you
think?"

He paused a moment, and went on:

"You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary
explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice
in them; you would not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a
ballet girl out of ordinary personal vanity. You would think it
much more likely that he inherited a dancing madness from a great
grandmother; or had been hypnotised at a seance; or threatened by
a secret society with death if he refused the ordeal. With
Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet--but not with Kitchener. I
should know all that, because in my public days I knew him quite
well. So I know that letter quite well, and criminals quite well.
It's not a criminal's letter. It's all atmospheres." And he closed
his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.

Rupert and the Major were regarding him with a mixture of respect
and pity. The former said

"Well, I'm going, anyhow, and shall continue to think--until your
spiritual mystery turns up--that a man who sends a note
recommending a crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually
carried out, at least tentatively, is, in all probability, a
little casual in his moral tastes. Can I have that revolver?"

"Certainly," said Basil, getting up. "But I am coming with you."
And he flung an old cape or cloak round him, and took a
sword-stick from the corner.

"You!" said Rupert, with some surprise, "you scarcely ever leave
your hole to look at anything on the face of the earth."

Basil fitted on a formidable old white hat.

"I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal
arrogance, "hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do
not understand at once, without going to see it."

And he led the way out into the purple night.

We four swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster
Bridge, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of
Fleet Street which contained Tanner's Court. The erect, black