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

A broad pantry lay just beyond the doors which opened from the public dining
room. To one side, a counter for trays of dirty china and silverware was topped
with a windowlike opening manned by the dishwasher's assistant. To the other, a
small door stood ajar; and behind it, murky in contrast to the lighted pantry, a
dim, narrow hallway stretched away into shadows.
Directly ahead, and running the full width of the big pantry, stood the service
counter. On the pantry side, waitresses yelled their orders and grabbed at plates
of food as they were dished up.
Behind, in the main kitchen, white-capped chefs were frantically busy at the
grids of the five big stoves. Beyond them, forming the back wall of the kitchen, a
row of storage closets extended between the side partitions. It was the small door
that interested the girl from Noonan's most. The dirt that Pete Brophy had been
bent on uncovering was nothing dishwater could remove; and people as
hectically occupied as the chefs and waitresses at rush hour would be unlikely to
have time for criminal action.
If, indeed, there really was anything wrong about the place. The fact that
Sniffle Grogan worked here, that one of the bus-boys had the eyes of a killer, and
that Grace instinctively had mistrusted Mr. Andre himself on sight-- might mean
nothing. Nothing at all. Still, Pete had been after something. And that something
seemed most apt to lie in the unexplored regions back of the pantry--the regions
reached by the strangely sinister hallway. The secret of Brophy's murder! If that
strong hunch was right--
"Look out where you're going, can't you?"
Grace faced an angry little girl, in a uniform identical with her own. Soup had
slopped from a bowl on her tray, at the impact of their arms.
Resisting the impulse to apologize, the redhead snarled a typical, "Yeah? You
ain't blind yourself, are you?" The girl passed on. The act had been perfect.
Beside Grace was the entrance to the hallway. In a flash, her tray had slid onto
a table flanking the opening. Hinges, surprisingly well oiled for a back-stairs door
of this sort, made no noise as the dark opening increased.
The lights and clamor of the pantry were behind her, suddenly; and the
closing panel cut them off. Ahead, lighted only by one bulb in an old-fashioned
bracket near the ceiling, lay the hall down which--she felt coldly, groundlessly
certain--Pete Brophy had moved this same time last night, to his death.
Grayness seemed to haunt the dismal passage like a physical presence. Grace
Culver felt it pressing about her, closing in as she stole forward slowly.
The uniform had gotten her past the only barrier she had been able to
anticipate in advance--that of attracting the attention of Andre's employees before
she could investigate the sections of his plant which lay beyond the reach of the
public. What lay ahead was unpredictable.
But it was dangerous. Sinister shadows, seeming to flicker in the corners,
warned her. The ghostly gray light seeping down from the cracked bowl
overhead, brooding, dismal, warned her. Tim Noonan's words--"No clues." Six
slugs in his back warned her.
Under her careful foot, a board groaned. The redhead's startled breath sucked
in sharply. A cold shudder twitched her spine.
The walls, so close that her shoulders almost touched them on either side,
were papered in a splotched design long since faded into a monotonous
invisibility. Dust lay on them, and there was a moldy smell to the worn carpet
under her feet.