"G.K.Chesterton. The man who was Thursday. A nightmare (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

kings. He leapt out of the boat on to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and
slender figure, amid the enormous masonry. The two men in the tug put her
off again and turned up stream. They had never spoken a word.


CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR


AT first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid;
but before he reached the top he had realised that there was a man leaning
over the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across the river. As a
figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat and frock-coat of the
more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower in his buttonhole. As Syme
drew nearer to him step by step, he did not even move a hair; and Syme could
come close enough to notice even in the dim, pale morning light that his
face was long, pale and intellectual, and ended in a small triangular tuft
of dark beard at the very point of the chin, all else being clean-shaven.
This scrap of hair almost seemed a mere oversight; the rest of the face was
of the type that is best shaven--clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble.
Syme drew closer and closer, noting all this, and still the figure did not
stir.
At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he was
meant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concluded that
he was not. And now again he had come back to a certainty that the man had
something to do with his mad adventure. For the man remained more still than
would have been natural if a stranger had come so close. He was as
motionless as a wax-work, and got on the nerves somewhat in the same way.
Syme looked again and again at the pale, dignified and delicate face, and
the face still looked blankly across the river. Then he took out of his
pocket the note from Buttons proving his election, and put it before that
sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for
it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left.
There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this.
Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is
even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the
deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was
something unnerving in it.
There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic
face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went
wrong.
The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man's face dropped at
once into its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further explanation or
inquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague.
"If we walk up towards Leicester Square," he said, "we shall just be in
time for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. Have you
had any sleep?"
"No," said Syme.
"Nor have I," answered the man in an ordinary tone. "I shall try to get
to bed after breakfast."
He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice that