"Shadow - 341201 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Double Chocolate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

"You'reЧwhat are you going to do to me?"
The counterfeiter shrugged his wide shoulders expressively,
"When some one is executedЧthey grant one last wish, no? You have such
wish? This is the time, Madame."
Execution!
Grace always had known that Death played tag with her profession. Her own
father had gone out that way, fighting, with his boots on. She might have been
content to follow him.
But cold-blooded execution, without a chanceЧ
Something flickered in Jorgen's hard eyes. Ugly amusement.
"Maybe you like a nice vase, eh?"
He really meant it, thenЧthat "last wish"! His twisted sense of humor
relished the situation. If only she could think of something difficultЧsomething
that would give her a little timeЧ
"A vase, Madame?"
She eyed him as calmly as she could, and forced her voice to steadiness.
"No, thanks. I'dЧI'd like a double chocolate soda, please."

It was the shortest ten minutes Grace Culver ever had spent. It seemed to her
that Jorgen, laughing disagreeably, had no more than sent Rocco out to the drug
store on the corner than the disfigured giant was back again.
The prisoner was sitting on the edge of the iron cot when the counterfeiter's
henchman came into the room, with the long paper carton gripped in one hand.
Across the small stand, the iron-haired crook called Pete stood watching her.
The ink bottle had been moved. There was nothing between them but the gray
automatic resting under Pete's fingers on his side of the tableЧmute warning that
there would be no second chance to reach the work bench.
Rocco set down his purchase on the table with a grunt. There it was. Double
chocolate soda. Straws. Everything. Her last wish!
The four men stood silent, staring at her. Grace could feel .their eyes again
boring, cold, pitiless. When she had finished that sodaЧwhat?
"Drink, Madame!"
Her fingers moved stiffly in response to Jorgen's gutteral command.
She ripped, the wrapper from about the straws and wadded it into a hard little
ball under her thumb. She thrust the straws into the creamy liquid.
She began to drink.
Pete's fingers, across the level table top, were spread loose on the automatic.
He was only a guard. But JorgenЧ there was a gun in his hand, too, now.
A tense hand. And the muzzle was lifting.
Up through the straws slid .the sweet brown drink which was to be her last. It
choked in her throat, but somehow she swallowed it. Nothing to do! There wasn't
any way out!
A moment, and the double chocolate would be gone. A hot roar, grim and
final, would fill the room. And then theЧ

A hideous din filled her ears, sudden, unexpected. It wasn't the gun. ItЧ
Some one was hammering on the panel which Mal had locked behind Rocco.
Some one was shouting.
"Culver! Red!"
It couldn't be Tim's voice, of course. She must be mad. Those staring eyes