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

guess at time--how long it had been since Andre's bus-boy had come upon her in
the hall. Half an hour? Two hours?
Grace moved stiffly, attempting to lift her arms and stretch them. It was then.
that she discovered they were tied-- bound neatly in strips of cloth which did not
cut into her flesh or numb her as ropes would have, so that she had not been
aware of them.
Bound and helpless in the dark. Perhaps in the very room where Pete Brophy
had stopped the six slugs, last night. Perhaps--
If only she knew where she was; who Grogan's companions behind that closed
door had been; how long she had lain unconscious; what lay behind that chink in
the wall above her!
As if in answer to her last question, a series of sounds reached her ears. The
rattle of dishes in a pan. A rough cough. The opening of a swinging door that
creaked on its hinges and closed again.
"One ham on rye? One sunnyside up, with bacon!" a man's voice singsonged.
Grace's heart leaped. She knew where she was, now. In one of those closets
back of the main kitchen of Andre's restaurant!
They had carried her downstairs, then, and in through some back way-- unless
the whole kitchen staff was in on Sniffle Grogan's scheme. That seemed unlikely.
Inching forward, she felt her shoulders contact the clammy wall. Jerkily,
painfully, she edged upward, using the wall as a support. It seemed a century
before she was standing on her feet in the cramped space which confined her. As
she stretched, the blood began to run through her cramped limbs once more.
Slowly, her body relaxed. Then, abruptly, it stiffened again.
A woman's voice had spoken from the opposite side of the thin wall. And the
redhead knew that voice! Upstairs, it had been saying, "There was other ways of
fixing him!"
"Here's the ham on," the voice whined. "Watch that pan, Rocky, it's spittin'.
Watch out for your eye."
Rocky!
The man's voice said, "Set 'em on the tray, Rosie. The gang out front's thinned
fast. Only five or six still in."
Rosie chuckled.
"It won't be so long now till Andy and Grogan and you can take the wren over.
She sure came in fast on the heels of that flattie you rubbed last night.
Something'll just as like spike that Washington jog yet. I was warnin' Andy--"
"Load on the potatoes," Rocky interrupted impatiently.
The girl from Noonan's, slipping quietly along the wall, had come to the
crack of glittering light. It was wider than she had dared hope. When her eye was
held close against it, she commanded a view of Andre's kitchen. It was different
now, not crowded with a rush of chefs and waitresses. The place was almost
empty, and some of the lights had been turned out. Rocky, dressed now in a
waiter's jacket, leaned against the service counter. A woman --big and broad, with
greasy black hair --stood at one of the stoves.
There was no one else in sight.
Something above the doors to the dining room suddenly caught the redhead's
notice. Eyes tightening, she gasped. The hands of the clock pointed to six
minutes before midnight!
No wonder the large staff employed to take care of the dinner crowd had
vanished. No wonder the place was deserted, save for Rocky and the woman at