Английский для смелых. Истории о духах и привидениях

 Dr Teesdale was a man of good nerve, and he recovered himself almost immediately, ashamed of his temporary panic. The terror that had blanched his face was chiefly the effect of startled nerves, not of terrified heart, and yet deeply interested as he was in psychical phenomena, he could not command himself sufficiently to go back there. Or rather he commanded himself, but his muscles refused to act on the message. If this poor earthbound spirit had any communication to make to him, he certainly much preferred that it should be made at a distance. As far as he could understand, its range was circumscribed. It haunted the prison yard, the condemned cell, the execution shed, it was more faintly felt in the infirmary. Then a further point suggested itself to his mind, and he went back to his room and sent for Warder Draycott, who had answered him on the telephone last night.

‘You are quite sure (вы совершенно уверены),’ he asked, ‘that nobody rang me up last night, just before I rang you up (что никто мне не звонил прошлым вечером, как раз перед тем, как я вам позвонил)?’

There was a certain hesitation in the man’s manner which the doctor noticed (в поведении надзирателя была определенная неуверенность, которую заметил доктор; manner – манера, поведение).

‘I don’t see how it could be possible, sir (я не понимаю, как это может быть возможно, сэр),’ he said. ‘I had been sitting close by the telephone for half an hour before, and again before that (я полчаса сидел возле телефона до звонка, да и еще раньше тоже). I must have seen him, if anyone had been to the instrument (я бы должен был его увидеть, если кто-нибудь подходил к аппарату).’

‘And you saw no one?’ said the doctor with a slight emphasis (а вы никого не видели? – сказал доктор, слегка акцентировав свой вопрос; emphasis – выразительность, сила, ударение).

The man became more markedly ill at ease (стало еще заметнее, что надзирателю: «этому человеку стало более заметно» не по себе; ill at ease – не по себе, неловко; ≈ не в своей тарелке).

‘No sir, I saw no one,’ he said, with the same emphasis (нет, сэр, я никого не видел, – сказал он, так же акцентировав свой ответ).

Dr Teesdale looked away from him (доктор Тисдейл посмотрел в сторону: «прочь от него»).

‘But you had perhaps the impression that there was someone there (но, возможно, у вас возникло впечатление, что кто-то там был)?’ he asked, carelessly, as if it was a point of no interest (как бы между прочим спросил он: «он спросил небрежно, словно эта деталь значения не имела»; point – точка; пункт, момент, вопрос; interest – интерес, интересность; значимость).