"Shadow - 350601 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Kitchen Trap" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

the stove. Only six minutes to closing time. And then-- As Rocky disappeared
through the swinging doors, bearing his loaded tray the girl detective tugged at
the bandages that trussed her wrists. Her heart was pounding.
Six minutes to get away! Six minutes before the guns that had snarled death
at Pete Brophy came back for her!
The bandages were tight, skillfully tied. But they had been made of what
seemed to be strips of an old dish towel --obviously to prevent the appearance of
marks on her wrists when the police found her body in the river. Sometimes old
cloth wasn't strong--
Five minutes, now. The black hand of the clock above the door seemed to be
racing like a demon. The bandages still held.
Grace's arms ached from the effort of trying to part them. The chords of her
throat stood out hard and straight under her skin.
Hinges creaked abruptly. Rocky was back.
"There's two more guys out front wants mashed potatoes," he chuckled.
"Hayseed all over 'em. They want you should heat the spuds as hot as they get 'em
back home. That's just the way the old geezer puts it. 'Like we get 'em in
Kokomo,' he says!"
Grace sobbed with the effort of her aching muscles. Kokomo! The signal!
Tim and Jerry were out front. And she was helpless!
"Kokomo!" Rosie scoffed. "Where's Kokomo?"
The bandages--old, rotten linen--began to give.
There were three minutes left, according to the clock. Grace felt her wrists
pulling away from each other as the worn cloth which held them separated.
Thread by thread, the rip in the white bandage widened before her eyes. Outside
in the kitchen, the swinging doors beneath the clock creaked as Rocky passed
through them on his way back into the restaurant. A pan rattled. The woman at
the stove muttered something, savagely, beneath her breath. The girl from
Noonan's gasped as the bonds which had held her parted with a final swift,
ripping sound. Her arms jerked apart, free. The bandage dropped away from her,
lay like a twisted white snake on the floor at her feet.
Moving quickly, but without noise, the redhead slid along the smooth plank
wall which separated her from the room where Rosie was at work. Her fingers
were flat against the partition, searching wildly for a break in the even surface.
As the pan on the stove rattled again, she found it. The slight aperture which
meant a door! Her hand shook as it slid down and closed over metal.
She pulled the knob toward her, cautiously. Nothing happened. She pushed
against it. The panel would not move.
The door to her prison was, as she had more than half suspected, locked. And
if the key was in the lock on the other side--
Quickly crouching in the darkness, Grace leaned forward until her forehead
was pressing against the cold knob. A pin point of light from the kitchen was
even with her eye, now.
She sobbed in gratitude. The key had been moved! Whoever had locked her
here, earlier in the evening, had been taking no chances on her accidental
discovery.
Clawing in their eagerness, her fingers snatched at the cheap bar-pin on her
breast. She felt it part and slip away from the starched material which had held it.
Her finger tips slid along the tiny, almost invisible corrugations of the clever
skeleton key which former the trinket's crossbar. How many minutes had passed