The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
The Flame looked quickly up at me as Doctor Gorgon followed his brother to the hall. I smiled back at her. Not a pleasant smile, maybe — but one of confidence. There was a peculiar look in her eyes. A questioning, uncertain look.
“Well—” she said at length — while the hollow, whispered, inaudible tones of conversation came from the little hall, “why don’t you say something? Don’t stand there looking accusingly at me. I—. What right have you? Why—. Well — say something!”
And I did.
“He travels farthest who travels alone.” I did a bit of quoting myself, like the Doctor. “And that probably goes for traveling fastest too. Your friend, the Doctor, noticed the gun in my pocket, which covered his brother.” And after a pause, “I wonder if you did, and if you were protecting Eddie or me.”
“You think I brought you here to — to your death? Well — why don’t you say so?”
“Should I?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Is it necessary? Rudolph Myer said I was the only one who took you for being weak minded. At least, Eddie was here — said you sent for him, and you didn’t deny it. That he muffed the works by acting too soon, and — perhaps — talking too much, isn’t your fault. But you certainly picked yourself a fine little playmate, when you did decide to—”
“Race,” she said very slowly, “you and I can’t fool ourselves any longer. At least, I can’t fool myself. I’ve never posed as being good. Quite the contrary. To hear you talk you’d think I had suddenly changed. Just one thing. You don’t believe I led you into a trap tonight?”
I sort of laughed.
“What else could I—”
“The same old song.” She came close to me, put those glims on me. “Always accusing — never believing. Come—” I let her get close to me, let her place her hands on my shoulders — even let her slip them back about my neck and onto the back of my head.
“Come—” she said again, “you don’t believe it. Yes or no.”
“Yes—” I said, “I do believe it. You can’t come the ‘kid act’ on me any longer. You can’t—”
“You fool,” she whispered hoarsely, looking toward the door. “I never ate my heart out because I couldn’t get you — have you. I could have had you whenever I wanted you — you or any other man. But I wanted you to want me, too. Don’t you see? I didn’t want you like the others. I could always have made you — can make you love me. Because — well — look here.”
That little body of hers was close to me. Warm breath was on my cheeks, hands pressed the back of my head. I just grinned down at her, lifted my hands slowly to take hers from about my neck — and she did it. One quick movement; one quick jerk — lips that touched mine; a breath that seemed to go deep into my body; a burning in my forehead; a quick, dizzy rush of blood — and her eyes, flaming and soft, and—. Oh, hell — it happened. Just for a second — maybe a split second — I crushed The Flame to me, held her so — then thrust her from me, flinging her half across the room. A chair turned, spun a moment, and toppled to the floor.
Chapter XII
Queer Talk
Had I lost my head? I don’t know. Why lie about such things? Yet—. Maybe I hadn’t been carried away by her presence—. But The Flame was beautiful; The Flame was—. Why shouldn’t a man hold a beautiful woman?
I leaned against the wall and looked at her. She was smiling at me. What was in her mind? Here was a wonderful woman. No — something else struck me then. The line I had just pulled on her. “He travels farthest who travels alone.” And she was coming across the room to me.
The woman! No — the woman was gone now. It was the girl, Florence Drummond. The sparkle of youth in her eyes — a softness — a realness that made me rub my hand across my glims and blink.
“You’re right, Race. Maybe, after all—” She stopped dead, and straightened. The hall door closed. Soft, slow feet — and Doctor Michelle Gorgon was in the room.
He ignored my presence completely — went straight to Florence, lifted both her hands in his and stared at her without a word. And The Flame looked back at him. Nothing of anger, just a straight look from clear deep eyes. No color came into her cheeks; no embarrassment to those great brown orbs.
“So you are The Flame. The Girl with the Criminal Mind. Do you know that you are a very fortunate young lady? Very fortunate indeed. I think that I could like you a great deal. I—”
“Doctor Gorgon,” I crossed the room, “Miss Drummond has had a very trying evening as it is. I think perhaps we will call it a night.”
He was very tall. He turned his head slowly and looked back over his shoulder at me. For some time he regarded me fixedly with those unblinking blue eyes.
There was nothing of anger in them — nothing even of hostility. More annoying for lack of either, I guess. He looked like a scientist studying some bug. And, damn it all — what’s more, he looked natural. Not as if he was affecting it, but as if he really meant it. As if he were trying to be... well... not polite — say, tolerant — and hide from me the fact that he regarded himself very much my superior.
“I wonder,” he said at length, “if you know exactly who I am.”
“Yes—” I said, “I do. And it don’t mean a thing to me. And I wonder if you know exactly who I am and—”
“And that it will mean quite a bit to me?” I think that he smiled — at least, his lips parted. “I am afraid, Race Williams, that you mean very little to me. To my brothers — yes. Their blood is hot, and the brute strength of the beast is dominant in them. But I am very sure that in you I would find little to worry about. I am afraid I have little interest in the physical. I abhor, as I said, firearms — shrink most appallingly from violence, and physical exertion of any kind incapacitates me for days. You don’t go in for murder, you see — and where I must bow most humbly to your physical superiority, it wouldn’t really interest me personally. No — you can not mean anything to me. You—” he paused a moment, and I saw his eyes rest upon the overturned chair, move quickly from The Flame to me, and then he said, “Well — perhaps you may mean something to me, but not in the sense you believe.”
He certainly could talk. There were no two ways about that. And what’s more, he could read what was on my mind — or, maybe, written upon my face. Anyway, I did have it in my mind to show him something of the physical that would surprise him. He looked big and strong enough not to be playing the woman.
“Really, Williams, I am sure you do not intend to use physical violence — at least, in the presence of a lady. You—”
“Doctor,” I told him, “you may be hot stuff with Eddie and a few other bar flies. And you may stand in with certain big men — and it may even be true what’s hinted; that you... well... that you’re the Third Gorgon that I’d always looked on as sort of an underworld myth until you stared Eddie down. But if you are the big guy behind the political racket, the judgeship scandal racket, and even the murder racket — well — drop Miss Drummond’s hands, or I’ll throw you down the stairs.”
He didn’t get mad — which made me just a bit madder.
“I wonder if you would,” he said slowly. “It might be interesting and—” He shook his head. “No... no, we anticipate things.” But he dropped The Flame’s hands.
“I think you had better go, Race,” The Flame said.
“Not me,” I told her. “I’ll wait until the Doctor decides to make an ‘out’ — which will be soon, I’m sure.”
“Don’t be a fool.” But there was more of interest in The Flame’s face than anger. “I... I won’t need you.”