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

the Professor, dashing open the door and slamming it behind him, and stood
outside in the snow.
"Can that old corpse be following me?" he asked himself, biting his
yellow moustache. "I stopped too long up in that room, so that even such
leaden feet could catch me up. One comfort is, with a little brisk walking I
can put a man like that as far away as Timbuctoo. Or am I too fanciful? Was
he really following me? Surely Sunday would not be such a fool as to send a
lame man? "
He set off at a smart pace, twisting and whirling his stick, in the
direction of Covent Garden. As he crossed the great market the snow
increased, growing blinding and bewildering as the afternoon began to
darken. The snow-flakes tormented him like a swarm of silver bees. Getting
into his eyes and beard, they added their unremitting futility to his
already irritated nerves; and by the time that he had come at a swinging
pace to the beginning of Fleet Street, he lost patience, and finding a
Sunday teashop, turned into it to take shelter. He ordered another cup of
black coffee as an excuse. Scarcely had he done so, when Professor de Worms
hobbled heavily into the shop, sat down with difficulty and ordered a glass
of milk.
Syme's walking-stick had fallen from his hand with a great clang, which
confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme,
who was commonly a cool character, was literally gaping as a rustic gapes at
a conjuring trick. He had seen no cab following; he had heard no wheels
outside the shop; to all mortal appearances the man had come on foot. But
the old man could only walk like a snail, and Syme had walked like the wind.
He started up and snatched his stick, half crazy with the contradiction in
mere arithmetic, and swung out of the swinging doors, leaving his coffee
untasted. An omnibus going to the Bank went rattling by with an unusual
rapidity. He had a violent run of a hundred yards to reach it; but he
managed to spring, swaying upon the splash-board and, pausing for an instant
to pant, he climbed on to the top. When he had been seated for about half a
minute, he heard behind him a sort of heavy and asthmatic breathing.
Turning sharply, he saw rising gradually higher and higher up the
omnibus steps a top hat soiled and dripping with snow, and under the shadow
of its brim the short-sighted face and shaky shoulders of Professor de
Worms. He let himself into a seat with characteristic care, and wrapped
himself up to the chin in the mackintosh rug.
Every movement of the old man's tottering figure and vague hands, every
uncertain gesture and panic-stricken pause, seemed to put it beyond question
that he was helpless, that he was in the last imbecility of the body. He
moved by inches, he let himself down with little gasps of caution. And yet,
unless the philosophical entities called time and space have no vestige even
of a practical existence, it appeared quite unquestionable that he had run
after the omnibus.
Syme sprang erect upon the rocking car, and after staring wildly at the
wintry sky, that grew gloomier every moment, he ran down the steps. He had
repressed an elemental impulse to leap over the side.
Too bewildered to look back or to reason, he rushed into one of the
little courts at the side of Fleet Street as a rabbit rushes into a hole. He
had a vague idea, if this incomprehensible old Jack-in-the-box was really