The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
Hammond had been shot through the heart. His body was still warm. Stoddard gently raised his head and shoulders, and leaned them back in the chair. The man’s heavy, domineering face was set and rigid; it expressed a profound amazement, as if death had revealed its mystery to him while he was yet alive.
Stoddard glanced swiftly around the room. There were no indications of a struggle, nor did he see a weapon of any sort. The door was shut. He closed and bolted the French doors.
Stoddard stood in the middle of the room debating with himself what he should do. The police must be notified, of course. But it was within the bounds of possibility that Hammond’s murderer was still in the house, in which event he must be apprehended at once. Stoddard’s mind was quickly and coolly made up. First, he would search every room in the place; then he would telephone to the police. He was unarmed, but Stoddard was one of those rare men who seem to have been born absolutely fearless. The risk he would run simply did not occur to him.
Stoddard remained where he was, however. His big body tensed suddenly and his rugged face grew as hard as flint. He leaned forward, listening intently, grey eyes fixed on the door. He had just discovered that he was not alone in the house. A small sound had come from the hall or room beyond the door: an inarticulate sound like the suppressed sob or a gasp of pain or terror. Stoddard measured the distance between himself and the door. Then his body flexed and he sprang forward, covering the intervening several yards at a single bound, caught the door handle, and jerked the door open.
A gasp of amazement broke from his lips; he fell back in consternation. A girl had tumbled headlong into the room. She recovered herself, and shrank back against the wall. Stoddard stared at her speechlessly, the color ebbing and flowing in his bronzed cheeks.
She was undeniably pretty; he realized this in spite of the consternation that transfixed him. Her eyes were large and dark and luminous, and her oval face, notwithstanding its deathly pallor, had an intriguing piquancy about it. Her dark bobbed hair fell around her well-shaped head in charming disarray. He saw that terror and horror dominated every fiber of her being; she seemed to shrink visibly as he stared down at her. Stoddard was the first to speak.
“Hammond is dead,” he said, huskily. “Do you know when it happened? — who did it?”
She must have found some reassuring quality in his voice, for the terror in her eyes receded a little. A moment or two elapsed before she replied.
“Ten minutes ago.” the girl whispered, jerkily. “I was in my room — I heard the shot — I found him — tumbled over his desk—” She stopped shuddering and covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know who! — why! — anything!”
Stoddard nodded understandingly.
“Did you hear anyone trying to get away — afterward?”
“No! There was no one in the house but Uncle Nat and I. Whoever did it — must have got out through those doors!”
She indicated the French doors by which Stoddard had entered the library.
The engineer shook his head emphatically.
“Those doors were bolted! He didn’t get out that way! He couldn’t have! I had to break one of them to unfasten the bolt.”
The girl stared at him incredulously.
“You are Hammond’s niece?” Stoddard went on.
She nodded, still keeping her dark eyes fixed upon him.
“I am Julia Hammond. Walter Hammond was my father. You are Mr. Stoddard, I suppose. Uncle Nat said you were coming about — the Parsee Sunrise.”
There seemed the merest edge of contempt in her tone as she mentioned the antique symbol. Stoddard let it pass without comment, however.
“About how much time elapsed between the firing of the shot and your entrance into this room?” he went on. “I must ask these questions, you know,” he added gently, noticing signals of distress in her eyes. “We’ve simply got to find out who did it!”
Julia nodded.
“Yes — I know,” she whispered. “I ran in at once — a few seconds, that’s all.”
Stoddard was incredulous now.
“But how could he have got away in so short a time without your seeing him?”
Tears suddenly welled up into the girl’s dark eyes.
“I don’t know! I don’t know how he got away!” she sobbed, with such emphasis that Stoddard was startled. “Uncle Nat and I were alone in the house. Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper, is visiting in Los Angeles over the weekend. Tyson, the man around the place, has gone to San Paulo for the car — it is being overhauled. He’ll be back soon. Someone must have got into the house, shot Uncle Nat, and got away. I don’t know how he got in, or who it was!”
Her voice had risen hysterically; she broke into a paroxysm of sobbing.
Stoddard’s protective instincts were thoroughly aroused now. He longed to utter some word of comfort, but he was essentially an outdoor man and he could think of nothing adequate to the situation; so he simply waited for the girl’s outburst to subside. Stoddard was as ignorant of women as he was wise in the ways of men, but he had an unusually keen brain and he thought he detected in the girl’s behavior a note of panic which her natural distress at her uncle’s tragic end did not account for satisfactorily. Moreover, how Hammond’s murderer could have got out of the house — provided, of course, he was not still in it — without Julia seeing him was utterly beyond Stoddard’s understanding. The engineer puzzled over these points until he found Julia looking up at him.
“I’m sorry I broke down like that,” she said quietly. “What shall we do?”
“I’m going to search the house,” Stoddard declared. “If the man we want isn’t hiding in it he must have got out through a door or window somewhere! You had better stay here.”
Julia shook her dark head decidedly.
“No, I’m going with you! I simply couldn’t stay here!”
She led the way into the hall, and snapped on a light. Stoddard preceded her to the front door. It was bolted on the inside. Julia said nothing. Stoddard felt a queer chill run over him. They began a tour of the house, commencing with the drawing-room. The windows of the latter were fastened — on the inside. They passed into the dining-room and then into the living-room. In these rooms also the windows were fastened.
“Uncle Nat had Tyson bolt them on account of the wind,” Julia explained tonelessly.
Stoddard did not reply. There seemed nothing to say. A sense of emptiness possessed him; he felt as if the atmosphere of the place were choking him. He avoided Julia’s eyes. They continued their rounds of the house in silence, coming into each of the five bedrooms and the two bathrooms in turn. All the windows were bolted. Finally they entered the kitchen. The single window was fastened and the back door which led into an outhouse was bolted on the inside. There was no basement. Every means of egress from the house was secured on the inside.
“I bolted the kitchen door after Tyson went to San Paulo,” Julia said, in the same toneless voice. “Uncle Nat has one or two valuable antiques, our house stands alone, and he was always very particular about having the doors locked and bolted, especially at night.”
Stoddard said nothing. Not until this moment had he permitted himself to contemplate the conclusion that had been hammering at his brain since they had found the front door bolted. Julia was looking at him unhappily, searching his face for some key to his thoughts. Stoddard contrived to avoid meeting her eyes. It was inconceivable that she had taken her uncle’s life, yet he was compelled to consider the evidence of his senses. His respect for the principles of logic, inculcated in him during a lifetime of professional experience, was not to be lightly put aside. Julia had known they would find the windows and doors bolted before they had begun to examine them! This, of course, accounted for that panic-stricken note he had detected in her breakdown in the library.