"Freda Warrington - A Taste of Blood Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warrington Freda)

"Ah, but did you understand it?"
"I believe so," said Karl. "If I did not, it's a failure of my intellect,
not of your exposition. You made a complex subject very clear."
"You speak such beautiful English!" said Madeleine. At the base of
the steps, Dr Neville flicked a switch and light fell coldly on bare
walls and water pipes, gleamed on fragile structures of glass and
metal and on tangles of wire that hung from the ceiling like jungle
creeper. The cellar was a cave of mysteries. The new, the


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unexplored, had not lost their power to fascinate Karl.
"Well, erhm—Karl, here we are. The Neville laboratory," said the
scientist with ironic pride. "Not quite the Cavendish, but we've
achieved some fine results here."
Henry, a large and dishevelled man with glasses and springy brown
hair, crossed to the far side of the room to adjust a piece of apparatus
—more out of nervousness than necessity, Karl thought. Madeleine
stayed close to Karl, almost touching him.
"Grim, isn't it?" she said with a mock shiver. "I never come in here
if I can help it. It's a wonder Henry, Father and Charlotte don't take
root down here, like mushrooms."
Karl smiled a little and looked at her. She was a lovely girl, very
confident of herself; that in itself was intriguing. The radiance of
her eyes, the blood in its fine mesh of capillaries glowing through
her translucent skin, the way the red highlights shifted on her hair,
held his gaze like a work of art. Even the straight and shapeless
clothes of these days had a kind of elegance about them, a freshness
and freedom. He watched Madeleine, unable to help himself, and
she basked in his attention.
"It may not be luxurious, but it's perfecdy serviceable" said Neville.
With his hands pushing his jacket pockets out of shape, he had more
the look of a gentleman farmer than a scientist; a mathematician,
physicist and doctor of philosophy. "The reason I set up my own
laboratory is that they are positively fighting for bench space in the
Cavendish. You wouldn't believe how small a budget they have to
survive on. So I decided to equip my own cellar and free the space
for someone else—not to mention taking Henry out of their hair."

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He chuckled. "Anyway, have a look round."
Karl breathed in the mingled odours of dampness, strange gases and
metals. A generator hummed in the background. There were sturdy
wooden tables pushed together and forested with clamp stands and