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

and bowed.

Poor Brown's face was still a picture of distraction. "But I don't
even begin to understand," he cried. "What bill? what blunder?
what loss?"

Mr P. G. Northover advanced in the centre of the room,
thoughtfully, and with a great deal of unconscious dignity. On
closer consideration, there were apparent about him other things
beside a screwed moustache, especially a lean, sallow face,
hawk-like, and not without a careworn intelligence. Then he looked
up abruptly.

"Do you know where you are, Major?" he said.

"God knows I don't," said the warrior, with fervour.

"You are standing," replied Northover, "in the office of the
Adventure and Romance Agency, Limited."

"And what's that?" blankly inquired Brown.

The man of business leaned over the back of the chair, and fixed
his dark eyes on the other's face.

"Major," said he, "did you ever, as you walked along the empty
street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for
something to happen--something, in the splendid words of Walt
Whitman: `Something pernicious and dread; something far removed
from a puny and pious life; something unproved; something in a
trance; something loosed from its anchorage, and driving free.'
Did you ever feel that?"

"Certainly not," said the Major shortly.

"Then I must explain with more elaboration," said Mr Northover,
with a sigh. "The Adventure and Romance Agency has been started to
meet a great modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in
literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre of events
for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. Now the
man who feels this desire for a varied life pays a yearly or a
quarterly sum to the Adventure and Romance Agency; in return, the
Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to surround him with
startling and weird events. As a man is leaving his front door, an
excited sweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his
life; he gets into a cab, and is driven to an opium den; he
receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit, and is
immediately in a vortex of incidents. A very picturesque and moving
story is first written by one of the staff of distinguished
novelists who are at present hard at work in the adjoining room.