"Shadow - 351015 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Bombproof Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

Tim's big frame swung toward the exit at the secretary's back.
"Better talk to him before the hospital people come. No chance he saw
anything out there. The attack was too quick. But it won't hurt to ask. Coming,
Redsie?"

Wally Mapes was fully conscious, stretched out on a mattress on the floor
of the laundry garage. The doctor who had been rushed to the scene had given
him emergency treatment on the spot before sending for an ambulance.
Peering down at the bandaged figure, Grace contacted the man's tortured eyes
almost at once. Her scrutiny seemed to arrest his attention. They stared at
each other for a full minute without speaking.
"Tough luck, Wally."
Hopes made no answer. His lint-swathed jaw might have explained this.
So, she thought suddenly, might some other things.
It was the driver's eyes that had burned the corners of the redhead's
intuition. Strange eyes. There was a dark glint in them. Something likeЧlike blood hate.
What could that mean?
"Can he talk, doctor?" Tim rumbled.
The physician shrugged.
"A little. But not too much, man. He's lost some blood. Shock, too; you
know."
There was no shock in Mapes's eyes, the girl - from the agency mused. And
no noticeable weakness, either. Some terrible inner struggle seemed to be
burning him, lending him extra strength.
But the man's Home-Way uniform was blood-spattered, and the thin mist
of sweat on his forehead showed he was suffering.
Tim bent above him.
"Who got you, old-timer?"
Mapes might have been bomb-deaf. His eyes, meeting the detective's, sparkled
dangerously. Then they closed. He made no other movement.
Tim turned away, shrugging. But those eyes of the injured man's still
bothered Grace Culver. Just a hunch. But she bent above him quickly.
"You could hear him, Wally. And you know something. Come on and
give! We'll find out other ways, any how."
Wally's lips panted slowly. But when she bent to catch the slow words gritting
through his teeth, they weren't the tip she bad been half-expecting.
"TheЧdevil withЧyouЧbaby." And that was all he had to say.
The ambulance arrived, clanging like mad up the narrow street. Orderlies
loaded the mangled Horner driver aboard. Grace, following them to the
curb, stared after the departing vehicle with a puzzled little frown.
Seeing the street reminded her of that moment the bomb had landed. The
slowly cruising car, abreast of the laundry door at just the right minute. The
neat get-away All too perfect for a hit-or-miss hoodlum job.
Mapes couldn't have seen his attackers. And yet he knew who did the job!
The hate in his eyes could mean nothing else but that Mapes knew.

Heart tingling Grace went back to Horner's office. Tim was just turning
from the telephone.
"Calling Jerry,"' he explained. "Not much chance tracing those letters. Only
may to get action from this Almond is to bait a trap. One truck is only a