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

"It can't be!" he cried, leaping. "There can't--"
The President flapped his large flat hand on the table like the fin of
some huge fish.
"Yes," he said slowly, "there is a spy in this room. There is a traitor
at this table. I will waste no more words. His name--"
Syme half rose from his seat, his finger firm on the trigger.
"His name is Gogol," said the President. "He is that hairy humbug over
there who pretends to be a Pole."
Gogol sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand. With the same flash
three men sprang at his throat. Even the Professor made an effort to rise.
But Syme saw little of the scene, for he was blinded with a beneficent
darkness; he had sunk down into his seat shuddering, in a palsy of
passionate relief.


CHAPTER VII. THE UNACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR DE WORMS


"SIT down!" said Sunday in a voice that he used once or twice in his
life, a voice that made men drop drawn swords.
The three who had risen fell away from Gogol, and that equivocal person
himself resumed his seat.
"Well, my man," said the President briskly, addressing him as one
addresses a total stranger, "will you oblige me by putting your hand in your
upper waistcoat pocket and showing me what you have there?"
The alleged Pole was a little pale under his tangle of dark hair, but
he put two fingers into the pocket with apparent coolness and pulled out a
blue strip of card. When Syme saw it lying on the table, he woke up again to
the world outside him. For although the card lay at the other extreme of the
table, and he could read nothing of the inscription on it, it bore a
startling resemblance to the blue card in his own pocket, the card which had
been given to him when he joined the anti-anarchist constabulary.
"Pathetic Slav," said the President, "tragic child of Poland, are you
prepared in the presence of that card to deny that you are in this company--
shall we say de trop?"
"Right oh!" said the late Gogol. It made everyone jump to hear a clear,
commercial and somewhat cockney voice coming out of that forest of foreign
hair. It was irrational, as if a Chinaman had suddenly spoken with a Scotch
accent.
"I gather that you fully understand your position," said Sunday.
"You bet," answered the Pole. "I see it's a fair cop. All I say is, I
don't believe any Pole could have imitated my accent like I did his."
"I concede the point," said Sunday. "I believe your own accent to be
inimitable, though I shall practise it in my bath. Do you mind leaving your
beard with your card?"
"Not a bit," answered Gogol; and with one finger he ripped off the
whole of his shaggy head-covering, emerging with thin red hair and a pale,
pert face. "It was hot," he added.
"I will do you the justice to say," said Sunday, not without a sort of
brutal admiration, "that you seem to have kept pretty cool under it. Now