"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after momentary
silence.

The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding
him.

The stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put down
unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio,
opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "Perhaps," he
whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to the
figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his companion
after each elaborate pace.

He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and he
went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at the corner
of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger through the
open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had not moved.

A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the artist
curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt that possibly
his circumspect attitude and position seemed peculiar and unaccountable.
Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipe and pouch from his
pocket, filled the pipe slowly.

"I wonder," . . . he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency.
" At any rate we must give him a chance." He struck a match in the virile
way, and proceeded to light his pipe.

Presently he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit from
the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped her at the
door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in explaining the
situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. She retreated
again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her manner, and
he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed and less at his
ease.

Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, his
curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his
darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in
the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some
sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour, the
evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium
stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. Something
flashed into Isbister's mind; he started, and leaning over the table,
listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction.
Astonishment seized him and became-dread!

No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!

He crept slowly and noiselessly round the table, pausing twice to listen.