Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Read Online Free

had been much remarked upon at the time, though not of course to his face.  No one had said anything to his face at all.
    No one.
    Ever.
    Anyone meeting him for the first time was too startled and embarrassed by his nose to speak, and the second time was worse because of the first time, and so on.  Years had gone by now, seventeen in all.  In all that time he had been cocooned in silence.  In hall it had long been the habit of the college servants to position a separate set of salt, pepper and mustard on either side of him, since no one could ask him to pass them, and to ask someone sitting on the other side of him was not only rude but completely impossible because of his nose being in the way.
    The other odd thing about him was a series of gestures he made and repeated regularly throughout every evening.  They consisted of tapping each of the fingers of his left hand in order, and then one of the fingers of his right hand.  He would then occasionally tap some other part of his body, a knuckle, an elbow or a knee.  Whenever he was forced to stop this by the requirements of eating he would start blinking each of his eyes instead, and occasionally nodding.  No one, of course, had ever dared to ask him why he did this, though all were consumed with curiosity.
    Richard couldn’t see who was sitting beyond him.
    In the other direction, beyond Reg’s deathly neighbour, was Watkin, the Classics Professor, a man of terrifying dryness and oddity.  His heavy rimless glasses were almost solid cubes of glass within which his eyes appeared to lead independent existences like goldfish.  His nose was straight enough and ordinary, but beneath it he wore the same beard as Clint Eastwood.  His eyes gazed swimmingly around the table as he selected who was going to be spoken at tonight.  He had thought that his prey might be one of the guests, the newly appointed Head of Radio Three, who was sitting opposite -- but unfortunately he had already been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy.  These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase ‘too much Mozart’ was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy.  The poor man was already beginning to grip his cutlery too tightly.  His eyes darted about desperately looking for rescue, and made the mistake of lighting on those of Watkin.
    ‘Good evening,’ said Watkin with smiling charm, nodding in the most friendly way, and then letting his gaze settle glassily on to his bowl of newly arrived soup, from which position it would not allow itself to be moved.  Yet.  Let the bugger suffer a little.  He wanted the rescue to be worth at least a good half dozen radio talk fees.
    Beyond Watkin, Richard suddenly discovered the source of the little girlish giggle that had greeted Reg’s conjuring trick.  Astonishingly enough it was a little girl.  She was about eight years old with blonde hair and a glum look.  She was sitting occasionally kicking pettishly at the table leg.
    ‘Who’s that?’ Richard asked Reg in surprise.
    ‘Who’s what?’ Reg asked Richard in surprise.
    Richard inclined a finger surreptitiously in her direction.  ‘The girl,’ he whispered, ‘the very, very little girl.  Is it some new maths professor?’
    Reg peered round at her.  ‘Do you know,’ he said in astonishment, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.  Never known anything like it.  How extraordinary.’
    At that moment the problem was solved by the man from the BBC, who suddenly wrenched himself out of the logical half-nelson into which his neighbours had got him, and told the girl off for kicking the table.  She stopped kicking the table, and instead kicked the air with redoubled