Mostly some run-on sentences and a bit of drag in the middle column of the page.
A few rough sentences of dialogue.
Also noticed a few grammatical errors (the professor’s speech opens with quotation marks but doesn’t feature any at the end, for example).
A few sentences that could have been combined for clarity (make quick into quickly, and the sentence could turn into Professor Cornacchia lunged quickly for an old man), but I can see the thought process (surprisingly quickly is a better sentence, but word count prevents some of the more illustrative sentences).
It’s not a massive deal, a lot of it is stylistic choices, such as the asterisks. I’ve used those before a lot, and don’t find them a problem.