"Diana Wynne Jones - The Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

small enough to get out through the top bathroom window.”
“Will you do that for us, dear?” Aunt May said as they all
plunged into the downpour inside the corridor. “We’ll hang on to
you. You’ll be quite safe.”
 “Yes,” Hayley said, “of course,” thinking that there didn’t seem to
be much choice.
“Of course you will!” Troy said warmly.
With rain thumping and pattering on their heads and backs, the
three of them rushed up a flight of stairs that was exactly like a
waterfall, to where Troy’s torch glinted on choppy waves in another
flooded corridor. Dark shapes of people churned about in it,
shouting to one another to “Keep that door shut!” and then,
“Where is Tollie?”
Aunt May and Troy wheeled sideways from here and pounded up
another flight of stairs which were—confusingly—completely dry.
Both of them yelled over their shoulders, “It’s all right. We don’t
need Tollie. We’ve got Hayley instead!” and then wheeled sideways
again into a little bathroom with a sloping ceiling. Someone had put
a big flickering lantern in the washbasin there. By its light, Hayley
saw a bath wedged in under the slope of the ceiling and above the
bath a small square skylight propped open on a thin metal bar.
Rain was spattering viciously in through the opening. Hayley
looked up at it and thought, How do I get up there !
“Don’t worry, we’ll lift you,” Troy said. He picked up a bath stool
and banged it down in the bath. “Hop up there and I’ll boost you,”
he said.
Before Hayley could move, Aunt May scrambled into the bath,
saying, “I’ll keep it steady.” Whereupon her sopping slippers shot
out from under her and she sat down with a splash, sending the
stool clanging into the bath taps.
“Oh, not again , Auntie!” Troy said. He put his shoulder under
Aunt May’s waving arm and helped her flounder to her feet again.
Somehow, in the course of the vast scrambling that followed, Aunt
May’s necklace burst. Beads clattered into the bath and rolled about
on the dimly lit floor. “Last necklace to go,” Troy said cheerfully.
“Don’t tread on a bead, Hayley. The floor’s covered with them now.”
He put the stool back under the skylight and squelched into the
bath beside it. He held out both hands to Hayley. “Up you get,” he
said. “Take my torch and get on the stool.”
“You’ll need the torch to see the drain,” Aunt May panted. Her
hair was now out of whatever had held it together and fanned over
her big shoulders like a lion’s mane. “The drain’s down to the left of
the window.”
Hayley took hold of the torch and found herself being hauled up
onto the stool. She stood there, wobbling rather, feeling Troy grab
her from one side and Aunt May from the other, and cautiously
took the metal bar off its spike and pushed the tiny window open
with her head.
It was horrible out there. Windy rain stormed into her face.
Worse still, when she worked the torch through beside her face and