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

elevation of the eyebrows. "Will you take a chair for a moment."
And he pressed an electric bell just above him, which thrilled and
tinkled in a room beyond. The Major put his hand on the back of the
chair offered him, but stood chafing and beating the floor with his
polished boot.

The next moment an inner glass door was opened, and a fair, weedy,
young man, in a frock-coat, entered from within.

"Mr Hopson," said Northover, "this is Major Brown. Will you please
finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?"

"Yes, sir," said Mr Hopson, and vanished like lightning.

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said the egregious Northover, with
his radiant smile, "if I continue to work until Mr Hopson is ready.
I have some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my
holiday tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don't we?
Ha! ha!"

The criminal took up his pen with a childlike laugh, and a
silence ensued; a placid and busy silence on the part of Mr P. G.
Northover; a raging silence on the part of everybody else.

At length the scratching of Northover's pen in the stillness was
mingled with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the
turning of the handle, and Mr Hopson came in again with the same
silent rapidity, placed a paper before his principal, and
disappeared again.

The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a
few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to
him. He took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and
altered something, muttering--"Careless." Then he read it again
with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it
to the frantic Brown, whose hand was beating the devil's tattoo
on the back of the chair.

"I think you will find that all right, Major," he said briefly.

The Major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will
appear later, but he found it like this:

Major Brown to P. G. Northover. L s. d.
January 1, to account rendered 5 6 0
May 9, to potting and embedding of zoo pansies 2 0 0
To cost of trolley with flowers 0 15 0
To hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0
To hire of house and garden for one day 1 0 0
To furnishing of room in peacock curtains, copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0