"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
essentially cylindricalthe Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in
hats. Circular curves always. Now-" He flicked out a little appliance the
size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold-a
little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking
and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. "That is
my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.

The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.

"We have very little time," he said.

"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you think of
this? "

"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.

"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor," but this
is our modern development See here." The little figure repeated its
evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," and with a click another
small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. The
tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift
as he did these things.

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of the
Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a
complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the
room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited
to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions
to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words
Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible
monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms
terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat
against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows,
one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two
score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person
entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a
mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the
machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was
released. The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the
flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham
saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a
singular fixity.

The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and
went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a
distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The cropheaded lad handed
the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the
mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth