Читать книгу Children of the Wind онлайн

32 страница из 58

"Exactly!" cried Rolls. "And the sun insists that you think of it, and quit bubbles. If you say 'No' to it, it says 'Very good; there's no hurry, to-morrow will do.'"

At which Cobby chuckled, roaring out in his big voice: "And this is what you propose to me!—to transform myself from a blower of bubbles into a blower of sighs! Stash the fakement, Rolls, as you say."

But Cobby had been, and was being, more influenced by Rolls than he admitted to himself, and three nights later was influenced still more by an event.

That midnight he was walking home from a scientific function at the Holborn Restaurant, and, after passing through Lincoln's Inn Fields, had descended some steps behind the Law Courts, going down into the lane of Clement's Inn, where it was dingy and desolate, when three men, who had on masks, appeared before him; and cried one, presenting a revolver: "You were warned, Cobby! Up with the hands!"

Cobby did nothing of the sort. Hot-headed as ever, he sent at the man a blow that staggered him, and had actually felled the second, before he was struggling with the third. As this third and he dropped together, he cut the hand of this one with a lancet, and, reaching out, cut the hand of the second, too, who was still half-prostrate.