"Conrad, Joseph - Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

He spoke in such a spiteful tone that I thought he was going to
round off with the words: "You fool" . . . and perhaps he meant to.
But what he finished sharply with was: "Shut the door quietly after
you."

And I did shut it quietly--you bet. Quick and quiet. The
indomitable spirit of that chap impressed me. I wonder sometimes
whether he has succeeded in writing himself into liberty and a
pension at last, or had to go out of his gas-lighted grave straight
into that other dark one where nobody would want to intrude. My
humanity was pleased to discover he had so much kick left in him,
but I was not comforted in the least. It occurred to me that if Mr.
Powell had the same sort of temper . . . However, I didn't give
myself time to think and scuttled across the space at the foot of
the stairs into the passage where I'd been told to try. And I tried
the first door I came to, right away, without any hanging back,
because coming loudly from the hall above an amazed and scandalized
voice wanted to know what sort of game I was up to down there.
"Don't you know there's no admittance that way?" it roared. But if
there was anything more I shut it out of my hearing by means of a
door marked PRIVATE on the outside. It let me into a six-feet wide
strip between a long counter and the wall, taken off a spacious,
vaulted room with a grated window and a glazed door giving daylight
to the further end. The first thing I saw right in front of me were
three middle-aged men having a sort of romp together round about
another fellow with a thin, long neck and sloping shoulders who
stood up at a desk writing on a large sheet of paper and taking no
notice except that he grinned quietly to himself. They turned very
sour at once when they saw me. I heard one of them mutter 'Hullo!
What have we here?'

"'I want to see Mr. Powell, please,' I said, very civil but firm; I
would let nothing scare me away now. This was the Shipping Office
right enough. It was after 3 o'clock and the business seemed over
for the day with them. The long-necked fellow went on with his
writing steadily. I observed that he was no longer grinning. The
three others tossed their heads all together towards the far end of
the room where a fifth man had been looking on at their antics from
a high stool. I walked up to him as boldly as if he had been the
devil himself. With one foot raised up and resting on the cross-bar
of his seat he never stopped swinging the other which was well clear
of the stone floor. He had unbuttoned the top of his waistcoat and
he wore his tall hat very far at the back of his head. He had a
full unwrinkled face and such clear-shining eyes that his grey beard
looked quite false on him, stuck on for a disguise. You said just
now he resembled Socrates--didn't you? I don't know about that.
This Socrates was a wise man, I believe?"

"He was," assented Marlow. "And a true friend of youth. He