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Interesting facts about Great Britain
Covent Garden is a historic marketplace which occupies a large area in the London City center. During the Middle Ages the territory belonged to Westminster Abbey. There were gardens and also an area where the markets and got its name – at first it sounded as “Convent Garden”, in which convent means monastery.
Henry VIII took for himself the land which belonged to Westminster Abbey, including the convent garden, and his son granted it as a gift to John Russel, Earl of Bedford. His family owned the land from 1552 to 1918. There emerged new buildings, piazza and the church of St. Paul’s. Gradually it began to be associated with an overcrowded place where poverty and crime throve. For example, Covent Garden impressed Charles Dickens who exclaimed: “Good Heaven! What wild visions of prodigies of wickedness, want, and beggary, arose in my mind out of that place!”
Writing
7. What is peculiar about other places mentioned in the chapter? Choose one of them and prepare a report on it.
IV
“Here we are!” said Holmes cheerly as we entered the room. “The fire looks very seasonable in this weather. You look cold, Mr. Ryder. Please take the basket-chair. I will just put on my slippers before we settle this little matter of yours. Now, then! You want to know what became of those geese?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or rather, I believe, of that goose. It was one bird, I imagine in which you were interested – white, with a black bar across the tail.”
Ryder quivered with emotion. “Oh, sir,” he cried, “can you tell me where it went to?”
“It came here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, and it turned out to be a most remarkable bird. I don’t wonder that you should be interested in it. It laid an egg after it was dead – the brightest little blue egg that ever was seen. I have it here in my museum.”
Our visitor staggered to his feet and clutched the fireplace with his right hand. Holmes unlocked his strongbox and held up the blue carbuncle, which shone out like a star, with a cold brilliant, many-pointed radiance. Ryder stood staring at it with a tense face, uncertain whether to claim or to disown it.
“The game’s up, Ryder,” said Holmes quietly. “Hold up, man, or you’ll be into the fire! Give him an arm back into his chair, Watson. He’s not got blood enough [71] to go in for crime with impunity. Give him a drop of brandy. So! Now he looks a little more human. What a shrimp it is, to be sure!”
71
he’s not got blood enough – он недостаточно хладнокровен
For a moment he had staggered and nearly fallen, but the brandy brought a shade of color into his cheeks, and he sat staring with frightened eyes at his accuser.
“I have almost every link in my hands, and all the proofs which I could possibly need, so there is little which you need to tell me. Still, that little may as well be cleared up to make the case complete. You had heard, Ryder, of this blue stone of the Countess of Morcar’s?”
“It was Catherine Cusack who told me of it,” said he in a crackling voice.
“I see – her ladyship’s [72] waiting-maid. Well, the temptation of sudden wealth so easily acquired was too much for you, as it has been for better men before you; but you were not very scrupulous in the means you used. It seems to me, Ryder, that there is the making of a very pretty villain in you [73] . You knew that this man Horner, the plumber, had been concerned in some such matter before, and that suspicion would rest the more readily upon him. What did you do, then? You made some small job in my lady’s room – you and your confederate Cusack – and you managed that he should be sent for. Then, when he had left, you opened the jewel-case, raised the alarm, and this unfortunate man was arrested. You then—”
72
her ladyship – ее светлость
73
there is the making of a pretty good villain in you – из вас вышел бы неплохой злодей
Ryder threw himself down suddenly upon the rug and clutched at my companion’s knees. “For God’s sake [74] , have mercy!” he cried. “Think of my father! of my mother! It would break their hearts. I never went wrong before! I never will again. I swear it. I’ll swear it on a Bible. Oh, don’t bring it into court! For Christ’s sake, don’t!”
“Get back into your chair!” said Holmes strictly. “It is very well to cringe and crawl now, but you haven’t thought of this poor Horner in the court for a crime of which he knew nothing.”
74
for God’s sake – ради Бога
“I will fly, Mr. Holmes. I will leave the country, sir. Then the charge against him will stop.”
“Hum! We will talk about that. And now let us hear the truth about what happened next. How came the stone into the goose, and how came the goose into the open market? Tell us the truth, because there lies your only hope of safety.”
Ryder passed his tongue over his dry lips. “I will tell you it just as it happened, sir,” said he. “When Horner had been arrested, it seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once, for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it into their heads to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I went to my sister’s house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton Road, where she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to me to be a policeman or a detective; and, though it was a cold night, the sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would be best to do.