"Shadow - 360215 - Back Pages - Grace Culver - Hit The Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Roswell)

Far away, Lubin's voice said: "She can't get out of that, I'll get Tyson, see what
he wants us to do."
Five minutes must have passed, but Grace's jaw hadn't stopped throbbing any.
Propping her pounding forehead against the wooden panel in front of her, she
listened to the heavy thud of feet tramping into the kitchen outside. Tyson had
arrived with Waxy.
"Waxy says you caught a dame snooping." The deep, actorish voice paused
significantly. "A dame with a rod."
"Dame, hell! Didn't you pipe Waxy's schnozzle? That's a wild panther, that
frill is!"
Tyson chuckled, a sound as cold as the click of ice cubes.
"Well, she's caged now. What she look like?"
Butch Pember growled, "Russian, kind of. Black hair done up in a braid. It
felt like a wig, though, maybe."
"Wig?" There was a murderous new throb to the scarred actor's exclamation.
"Say! She passed me. Dancer, she said. But I got her figured now! That's the dame
from the Noonan Agency, the bonfire skirt."
Grace, upright in her narrow prison, heard him pace up to the door, wheel and
stride away again. There was scarcely space to shudder in the broom closet.
She'd seen coffins that were roomier.
"The studio's getting too hot. Too many cops, along with the dicks." Tyson
paused only an instant. "The zombie's going to pull his last curse-right now!"
"Huh?"
"The poor, faithful watchman is going to lose his bungalow, By fire! Too bad
that pretty little cutie has to burn. But that's how it is with a voodoo hex."
He went on swiftly, his cold, deliberate voice outlining the steps of his hellish
plan to cover all tracks.
"Jake, you'll stay here. Stack rags, papers, wood from around the place against
the broom closet. Douse 'em with gasoline and start a good blaze. Then grab the
ice and the camera and scram. Later, when the crowd collects, you're a news
photographer here after pictures. Hitch back to Maysville with the fire company
or the cops, camera in the open. You won't be tracked that way."
"O. K., chief." Jake sounded pleased.
"You, Butch-you and Waxy and I are leaving, too. But not without that Dore's
emeralds. On Stage 5, in about three minutes; the hex is going to show up plenty!
Good luck, Jake."
The heavy footfalls receded-three pairs of them. Then the screen door
slammed. In the kitchen, Jake began to whistle softly.
The noise of a table being dragged toward the broom closet door scraped
menacingly across the scrubbed planks.
Three minutes!
Twisting frantically in the narrow space, the girl from Noonan's worked her
arms aloft. When they were level with the heavy Russian braid atop her head,
supple fingers went to work.
They found what they were seeking quickly, settled down to the swift
business of unplaiting the false black hair.
"Here's where that Culver gal's last chance to stay uncooked takes the
spotlight for fair!" she whispered grimly.
In her eager fingers now was a little green pellet. It was one of Gracie's many
crime-solving gadgets. A single wisp of string, protruding from it, unwound