"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 301 - The Mother Goose Murders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

The envelope was addressed to one Lee Quade and it was specifically
marked
Apartment 2-D. Hesitating only briefly, Diane tore open the envelope, blew
into
it, and extracted its thin contents.
Thin, because the envelope didn't contain a letter; what it held was a
slip of paper that Diane thought at first must be a newspaper clipping until
she discovered instead that it was part of a page cut from a child's book.
Even
in the poor light, Diane could easily read the large-print words that were
common to most editions of "Mother Goose."
The rhyme was a familiar one that Diane found herself reading half-aloud,
as a flash-back to one of her own childhood habits.
This was the verse:

Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his pipe
And he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.

Smiling as she finished the rhyme, Diane realized that this wasn't the
time for smiles. Whatever he was, other than a masked robber, Lee Quade wasn't
the sort to be receiving nursery rhymes except as a gag; and anyone who knew
him well enough to joke with him, might well be the next stop along the trail
that Diane had started.
Staring with distant eyes below her furrowed forehead, Diane spoke
slowly:
 "Old King Cole! It may mean the next person on the list! The next person
that Quade is supposed to rob -"
If Diane's eyes had been as busy as her thoughts, she would have noticed
the darkness that was gradually moving across the slip of paper that she held
upon the opened envelope. But she saw nothing, heard nothing, not even the
slight creak beneath the frayed carpeting of the hallway floor, as a figure
loomed behind that spreading darkness.
Then came the sudden swoop of a hand, the clamp of a fist upon Diane's
wrist. Before the girl could give more than a startled gasp, a low snarl
ordered silence.
There was more than a snarl to support the order. Turning, Diane stared
into hard eyes and recognized their cold glisten as something she'd seen
through the slits of a mask, that very afternoon. Even colder than the eyes
was
the more potent silencer that Lee Quade had previously handled.
That silencer was the muzzle of a .38 revolver, aimed squarely between
the
eyes of Diane Marlow!


II