Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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"Yes," said O'Malley softly in my ear as we leaned against the chimneys and watched the tobacco curl up to the stars, "and it was this man's imagination that had evidently caught old Stahl and bowled him over. I never fathomed the doctor quite. His critical and imaginative apparatus got a bit mixed up, I suspect, for one moment he cursed me for asking 'suspicious questions,' and the next sneered sarcastically at me for boiling over with a sudden inspirational fancy of my own. He never gave himself away completely, and left me to guess that he made that Hospital place too hot to hold him. He was a wonderful bird. But every time I aimed at him I shot wide and hit a cloud. Meantime he peppered me all over—one minute urging me into closer intimacy with my Russian—his cosmic being, his Urmensch type—so that he might study my destruction, and half an hour later doing his utmost apparently to protect me from him and keep me sane and balanced." His laugh rang out over the roofs.

"The net result," he added, his face tilted toward the stars as though he said it to the open sky rather than to me, "was that he pushed me forwards into the greatest adventure life has ever brought to me. I believe, I verily believe that sometimes, there were moments of unconsciousness—semi-consciousness perhaps—when I really did leave my body—caught away as Moses, or was it Job or Paul?—into a Third Heaven, where I touched a bit of Reality that fairly made me reel with happiness and wonder."