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

formalities of diction, but also with a very convincing realism.

"And now--" I began.

"And now," said Shorter, leaning forward again with something like
servile energy, "and now, Mr Swinburne, what about that unhappy
man Hawker. I cannot tell what those men meant, or how far what
they said was real. But surely there is danger. I cannot go to the
police, for reasons that you perceive. Among other things, they
wouldn't believe me. What is to be done?"

I took out my watch. It was already half past twelve.

"My friend Basil Grant," I said, "is the best man we can go to. He
and I were to have gone to the same dinner tonight; but he will
just have come back by now. Have you any objection to taking a
cab?"

"Not at all," he replied, rising politely, and gathering up his
absurd plaid shawl.

A rattle in a hansom brought us underneath the sombre pile of
workmen's flats in Lambeth which Grant inhabited; a climb up a
wearisome wooden staircase brought us to his garret. When I
entered that wooden and scrappy interior, the white gleam of
Basil's shirt-front and the lustre of his fur coat flung on the
wooden settle, struck me as a contrast. He was drinking a glass
of wine before retiring. I was right; he had come back from the
dinner-party.

He listened to the repetition of the story of the Rev. Ellis
Shorter with the genuine simplicity and respect which he never
failed to exhibit in dealing with any human being. When it was
over he said simply:

"Do you know a man named Captain Fraser?"

I was so startled at this totally irrelevant reference to the
worthy collector of chimpanzees with whom I ought to have dined
that evening, that I glanced sharply at Grant. The result was
that I did not look at Mr Shorter. I only heard him answer, in
his most nervous tone, "No."

Basil, however, seemed to find something very curious about his
answer or his demeanour generally, for he kept his big blue eyes
fixed on the old clergyman, and though the eyes were quite quiet
they stood out more and more from his head.

"You are quite sure, Mr Shorter," he repeated, "that you don't
know Captain Fraser?"