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

shadowed thickly. Here the girl from Noonan's stopped, flattening back out of
sight with a quick, deft movement. Her thin shoulders pressed tight against the
hoops of the rotting barrel.
She waited.
The minutes dragged past with leaden slowness, one like another, the next
.like the one before. It was cold in the narrow place, but at least the wind was cut
off.
From the eaves above, water was dripping into the barrel with maddening
steadiness, like a drum pounding. Drip ЧdripЧdripЧdripЧ
Suppose Jorgen had already gone, while she was telephoning? Or suppose he
had no intention of leaving the hang-out until morning? Or suppose there were
another exit, on some other street?
It was a fool's business, waiting like a cat at an unknown mousehole while
the.Ч
A latch clicked suddenly somewhere in the darkness.
The tiny, metallic sound sent an echoing tremor through the redhead's
crouching body. She tensed against the barrel until its nailheads bit into the soft
flesh of her shoulder. SlowlyЧbreathlesslyЧshe worked herself erect, her back
scraping the damp old wall.
It was Jorgen! His rangy figure was turning away from the fourth door in the
row. And he had not locked it behind him!
Grace flattened back between the rotting staves and the cold bricks, like the
middle layer of a sandwich. So close that she could have touched him, the
proprietor of the curio shop swung down the alley to the intersecting street. His
jaw made an ugly line against the lamplight beyond as he turned the corner and
disappeared.
She watched the entrance to the alley for a full two minutesЧwaiting. At the
end of that time, a grocery truck bumped past the opening and a fat woman
waddled along in its wake. No Jorgen. She could breathe again.
The fourth door in the row. The girl's trim figure flashed across the space
between shadows and shadows so quickly that even a watching eye might
easily have missed the movement.
But there seemed to be no watching eye. The cellar ahead of her, in which
only a dim light flickered, looked empty. And Jorgen had not shown any
indication of a belief that he was spied upon.
NowЧif she could get into his quarters while he was awayЧif she could
unearth some incriminating evidence, to justify an arrest by Tim when Jerry
brought himЧ Now, while the place was empty!

The door slid away from her with a rusty groan, at the pressure of her hand.
Hugging the wall to keep from falling in the darkness, Grace felt her way forward
into a black pit.
Three steps down. Then level flooring was beneath her feet again. In the
half-light, as her eyes became used to it, she had little difficulty in seeing what
came next.
Solid mortar walls slanted away from her, flanking a narrow hallway. There
was no opening in eitherЧno doors, no windows. But between them, a hundred
yards farther on, a closed wooden panel showed, dimly. And beneath it a line
of white light glittered.
Her fingertips following the wall for guidance, the redhead moved quickly