"Daniels, Norman A - Paid To Die - Avenger 4003 backstory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniels Norman A)

move. He pretended to lapse back into unconsciousness.

Tires grated on the driveway outside. A door opened and one man entered. He was well dressed and
his face was covered by the usual bandage-mask. Cold eyes looked O'Hara over.

"You didn't get him any too soon," he said. "I'd still like to know how he got wise to Nick.
This copper is a bad one, I'm glad we're able to dispose of him--and do it right. Throw him into the
back room. Tie him up first and do a good job of it, then come back here. We've a job for the
morning."

O'Hara was pulled off the chair, shoved against a wall and two of the men rapidly wound him with
wire. He was tripped, seized by the legs and dragged across the floor to a small room. The door
closed on him.

O'Hara waited two minutes to be certain no one lingered in the darkness, and then he rolled over
until he struck the wall. He hoisted himself into a sitting position, found that while his arms were
pinned to his sides with wire, he could still move them at the wrists. By some agonizing work he
managed to wangle a package of matches from his pocket. He scraped one, held it away from his side
and took a quick look around the room. It was some kind of supplies' closet for the shelves were
lined with packages and cans of food.

"A hide-out," he told himself, "in case things went sour."

But what to do about it? There were no windows in the room and the only door led back to where
the thugs were in conference. O'Hara was just as much a prisoner as a man in the dankest hole of
Alcatraz. Worse off, too, because a seemingly inescapable doom waited for him. He recalled the talk
of a foot bath in plaster of Paris. They'd weight him down, drop him beneath one of the river piers,
and he'd sink to the bottom and stay there until his flesh rotted and his bones parted away from the
weight around his feet. He lit another match and shivered as he saw a big barrel labeled "Plaster of
Paris" in one corner.


He slid to the floor again, rolled over to the barrel and hoisted himself up once more. He moved
the lid of the barrel aside and saw that it was three-quarters full of the white powder. Then, for
fifteen minutes, O'Hara was a busy man. His movements were slow, and awkward, and as quiet as he
could make them. His muscles ached, his arms were swollen as he pressed against the wire bonds.
Finally he was done, and with a sigh, he relaxed to the door again. He rested for about two minutes
and then rolled over until he was near the door. Muffled voices came from beneath it.

"Here are your final orders," the man who apparently was the leader spoke in a reedy voice,
surely disguised. "You men will assume your regular posts, replacing the others now on duty. This is
to be our last trick and our biggest so be on your toes. In the morning Cardy's, the largest jewelry
house in the city, will open its doors. Give them time enough to get the safe open and then go to
it. If you have to use guns-go ahead. They'll never get us. Everything is set for a getaway. We'll
be a mile in the sky before the cops even find out there was a robbery."

"But they'll see our faces," someone protested. "We can't put on them bandage-masks, can we?"

The leader of the murder group seemed to be thinking awhile. "No, you're right. Masks wouldn't
conceal our identities. So here is the set-up. There will be only three men reporting to the store