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.
Nick said: “The truth of the matter is you don’t know Commissioner Hartly at all and he never sent you after me... What’s your game, Mr. Sze?”
Mr. Sze did not reply. He met Nick’s eyes with his own cold stare and let it go at that.
“When we reach Waiana — and it’s here now — I’m going to turn you over to the police, Mr. Sze, unless you tell me what your game is.”
“This unwitting person—”
“Oh, for Lord’s sake, skip the obsequious formalities, Sze. Let’s not kid each other.”
Mr. Sze did not object. He said: “Forgive me. Am I such a poor actor?”
“No, but your research was poor. What’s the idea?”
“Too bad, really too bad,” Mr. Sze said. “I’m so very sorry. I know so little of medicine and I was given such little time. It would have been more harmonious if we had reached an understanding through my little thespia. Now I regret, sah, that it will be more difficult.”
“I don’t like you,” Nick Adams said bluntly. “And I don’t like your methods. I’m turning you over to the police.”
The car jolted to a halt, brakes squealing. Nick started to open the door. Mr. Sze, still blank-faced, said quietly: “Forgive me, please do not touch it, sah, or I will be compelled to shoot you.”
Nick paused. He glanced around, saw that Mr. Sze had a pistol in his right hand. The polished steel barrel caught up the reflection of the sun with dazzling flashes of fire. There was nothing to be said under the circumstances.
“I am going to a little place in Waiana here,” Mr. Sze remarked. “Forgive me, but you will honor me with your presence.”
“You go to the devil,” Nick said. “You can’t frighten me.”
“That is to be regretted if true,” Mr. Sze said, his face serenely empty. “If so, I must shoot you and run. I was ordered to detain you peaceably, sah, and if that failed, I could use my own discretion, as long as the purpose was achieved. I have no choice in this instance but to shoot you if you do not cooperate. Forgive me, it makes no difference to me one way or the other. I leave the choice to you.”
Nick was flabbergasted. “Of all the damned silliness,” he said. “If it’s robbery—”
“We are not concerned with money,” Mr. Sze said. “Please leave your bags, sah. Sit still; you are to be a prisoner. It is a happy occasion that you are being so very sensible.” He started the car again. “I will put the pistol in my pocket with my hand around it. You will drive with me. Obey me. I sincerely trust you will behave like a gentleman, for if so, there will be no regrettable violence. Nothing will happen if your behavior is exemplary. Please, sah, now.”
Nick was scarlet with anger and frustration. The man was bluffing probably, and yet Nick didn’t want to take a chance, not with a pair of eyes like that. If he could only have seen some expression in the face he might have been able to make a few guesses, but the face was void. He dropped his bags, grimly, desperately, and sat back.
Mr. Sze drove. On the edge of Waiana, he turned off the main road and presently stopped the car in front of a small cottage, placing the right side of the car so close to the wall that Nick could not get out on that side. Mr. Sze opened the door on his side and got out and stood behind the door.
“That is very excellent,” Mr. Sze said. “With haste, if you please, Dr. Adams, we have so little time. That way out.”
“Oh, all right, damn you, I’m coming,” Nick said grimly.
Mr. Sze waited. There was no sign of the pistol, no need for sight of it. When he neared the end of the seat, Nick saw that Sze’s position behind the door was vulnerable. His own nerve was good. When he came abreast of it, he dropped both of his bags, braced both feet against the half-opened door and slammed the door wide open, grateful that it was steel. It struck Mr. Sze with a shuddery thud, knocked the Chinese down. Nick touched the starter, put the car in gear, drove off. He had a momentary glimpse of Sze rolling on the ground. He waited to be shot at. No shots however. In the mirror he saw Mr. Sze, his face void of anger. Nick was a little dismayed at Mr. Sze’s lack of expression. It was very unreal. No fury, no despair, no frustration, nothing. He stood on the street, regaining his feet, like an innocent tourist, hands in his pockets, and watched the car go. It was a chilling sensation to see him. Then Mr. Sze disappeared, along with the confused and unimpressive patterns of Waiana, and the car was rolling southwest toward Honolulu. There was no point in calling the police now. Oahu was an island. Sze would not get away. There was the cottage too. Nick hoped fervently that he would never meet Mr. Sze again. It had been a very unpleasant experience.
Chapter Two
The Devil Is Loose!
As far as Koko Head, he had worried about Venner’s telegram. Now he worried about H. H. Sze. Life could be incredible sometimes. It had happened before. You could get along for a year without the slightest deviation in a monotonous routine, and then, for no reason at all, you were whisked into a maelstrom.
Consideration of Venner’s telegram was really de trop because he could only conjecture. The wire was a trifle spectacular and melodramatic and Nick conservatively doubted that disaster of any kind except typhoon, earthquake or hurricane could be imminent within forty-eight hours. How could you put a time limit on disaster? And why the devil was he so important to Venner? It did not read, Request your assistance. Oh, no, it was Require your assistance. A very urgent touch. He reminded himself not to be angry with Venner when the disaster turned out to be a phantom. The average person was secretly addicted to exaggeration, and it had taken Nicholas Adams many years of painstaking research to speak the facts of a fact and not what might be startling about a fact.
He could not however dismiss Mr. Sze as easily. Mr. Sze had been in earnest. The pistol had been real.
He thought, What did the bandit want with me? Is the prestige of the Cardwell Institute so great that he had visions of kidnaping and a glowing ransom? He seemed too practical for such an idea. And he knew about Venner — and the wireless!
It was true, as he was well aware, that the Cardwell Institute did enjoy a prestige in Hawaii akin to that jealously guarded by the old guard mercantile firms whose ancestry dated back to the pre-treaty days of iron men and sailing ships, and all this because lives were saved by it.
Lord knows that was true enough. Nick himself had been saving fifty thousand lives a year now for many years, and he could get tired of saving lives. They didn’t want to be saved. You showed a cause and a result. Like the hookworm in Malaya. It didn’t make any difference usually. The boys were too damned lazy to use the latrines, and too damned anemic from hookworm to worry about death. So you broke out the thymol and gave them the works one more time and for a while you got it well under control again... But give it a year.
Nick Adams had never been too philosophical. There had been nothing philosophical about his reply to the young Japanese medico who, during the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, had asked him, “How can you Americans be so generous with this money and all these supplies and medicines? You will forgive my distrust but is there not some hidden reward for you, in this dispensation?”
“Sure,” Nick had said baldly. “There is balm in Gilead for an old man’s soul. The gentleman who founded this Institute, Alexander Cardwell the First, made some ninety millions of dollars stealing railroads from other gentlemen. And when he wizened and saw the yawning grave before him, he repented, and wished to gather a smattering of honor unto his perfidious name. So for all this, you are to remember Cardwell San as a gentleman and a scholar and a great humanitarian instead of a robber baron and bandit. Do I make myself clear?” Such logic however was beyond the understanding of a Japanese.