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

movie lot? Could that legendary curse of Ik-la-Duk be anything more than
tommy-rot to fill the gossip columns?
The terrified producer, she knew, really believed in it. Two men had already
been butchered, in the same day and for no sane reason, as soon as the "haunted"
lot was reopened. Both weapons used were native devices. And why would any
human murderer have picked them; and how come into possession of them?
"I wonder," she muttered in the darkness, under cover of the wailing voodoo
death chant that emanated from the screen, "whatever became of Barit Tyson?"
Moe Eisman was getting ready to leave his office for the day when the little
redhead from Noonan's agency appeared on the office bungalow's doorstep. The
mogul's car was waiting, and in his eyes lurked something that said he didn't at all
like to be in this particular spot after dark.
But the girl detained him with a grin.
"Well, Miss-Miss Culver?"
"I won't keep you a minute, Mr. Eisman. But 'The Voodoo Vow" got me to
remembering Barit Tyson. I thought maybe you'd know why he dropped out of
pictures? Where he is now?"
The seemingly unimportant question had hounded her, for some reason, to the
extent of bringing her here. Yet, despite its insistence, she was unprepared for the
way Eisman took it, for the popping of his frightened eyes and the visible chill
that racked him.
"Oh! You should ask me now about poor Tyson! It was that no-good of a
monkey devil that did it! Just like now he kills off good workers like Boyd and
Daky and-"
"Did what?" Grace gasped. "Did Barit Tyson die here, before you closed the
lot seven years ago?"
"Better he should 've! Such a box office! Such a draw with the women! Only
two days and we'd have finished shooting the picture. And it had to happen to
Tyson!"
The redhead's brown eyes glinted.
"But what happened, Mr. Eisman?"
"A charge of powder is supposed to blow up the witch doctor's hut, for the
fadeout."
"Yes?"
"Gives it a defective fuse, gives it voodoo monkeyshines, I don't know. She
goes up two minutes too soon. Like a beefsteak, Tyson's face turned out. Scars!
Burns!"
"So that's why he had to leave the screen?" Grace exclaimed softly. "Poor
devil. Where is he now?"
Eisman shrugged.
"To fire him is a crime. He's no more good in pictures. So I give a job as
watchman here. I build him a nice bungalow. Still he stays on. It was Tyson let
you onto the lot, this afternoon."
Barit Tyson, the scarred gateman? But it was true. That deep voice of his was
what she had been remembering all through the voodoo picture. Grace's heart
began to pound.
Eisman, turning away, was scurrying into his limousine. She caught at his
elbow.
"Mr. Eisman, shooting on 'Love Locked Out' begins in the morning, doesn't
it?"