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 told him what the purpose might be and mentioned the episode with H. H. Sze at Waiana.
Captain Malta shook his head. “Venner made a great mistake in not working with the Army. We’d have co-operated one hundred percent. As it is, we’re batting with a split stick.”
Nick handed him the telegram. “The reminder has chastened me, Captain. Perhaps you’d better have a look at this.”
Captain Malta glanced at it. “I’ve seen a copy at the R.C.A. offices on South King Street.”
“Captain, you’re amazing! How did you know—”
“Found your wireless in reply to the one he sent. Right on his desk at his quarters, unopened. He was murdered before he ever received it. Naturally I could tell from your wire something of what he had sent and got in touch with R.C.A. Rather startling, wasn’t it? Forty-eight-hour disaster.”
“Twenty-five hours now,” Nick said. “And we sit wasting time.”
“You are never wasting time when you are thinking,” Captain Malta said. “A culprit can be captured in sixty seconds if you know where to take him and what for. So please let’s discuss this. What sort of disaster did you think Venner insinuated?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “There was no way of telling. He mentioned the idea to Dr. Wing at lunch yesterday and said something about secrecy being essential to avoid panic among the people. So that would make it a universal disaster. I’d considered an artificial epidemic of cholera. You see, the impregnable fortress of Oahu is impregnable only so long as the men and women inside the fortress are able to man it. A sweeping epidemic of cholera would wreak havoc. I’m not much of a cholera man myself, never was much interested in the disease because its causes and its remedies were so simple.”
“Well, now,” Captain Malta said, frowning heavily, “you may have hit the nail on the head.”
“It would be the easiest sort of thing to start rolling, and the easiest way of reaching the entire populace of Oahu Island. It’s a horrible idea, but it’s quite possible it wouldn’t work.”
“It’s not contagious, is it?” the captain asked.
“Oh no. You have to drink cholera to catch it. It’s in the water. That’s what I mean about it not working. You have a high percent Chinese and Japanese population on the island. The Chinese learned about cholera hundreds of years ago when they became a nation of tea drinkers. In other words, I’m quite sure your Chinese population would not come down with it because they boil their water for tea. We Americans ourselves are coffee drinkers so that the disease would not be apt to decimate us, and the moment you had more than the average cases, you’d warn everyone to boil water and you would nip it in the bud. It’s not contagious. There’s the crux. So I’m almost certain you can discard the premise,” Nick said. “And that leaves me absolutely without another theory, because that is the only epidemic I know of which could possibly be started artificially.”
“Then we must look for a different disaster. Now see if what I have to tell you suggests anything to you. Today is Tuesday. Monday morning, a soldier from Schofield Barracks named Robert MacFerson reported in here at the hospital, violently ill. The nurse on duty downstairs — Miss Farrar I think her name is — she said he was in poor shape, to express it mildly. Dr. Venner brought him up to Isolation and put him off in a room by himself with a nurse — Miss Agatha Wilson. Then Dr. Venner came down with his aide, Woolton, and said that no one was to see the patient without his permission. By Monday noon, the patient apparently failing, Dr. Venner went down to Honolulu. Where he went we have no idea. Why he left a dying man is also something I don’t understand.
“You say that he lunched with Dr. Wing. This wasn’t all, obviously. He never returned to the hospital. He was alive to send you the radiogram at 8:33 p.m. but he never returned to Stafford Hospital.”
Nick said: “It’s possible he deserted his patient and went downtown because of the urgency of the terrible secret he had unearthed. If the patient were in a hopeless condition — though why he isolated the patient so thoroughly interests me. Captain, I think it might do us no harm to visit the Isolation Ward and see the patient.”
“Oh, he’s probably dead,” Captain Malta said.
“Do you know what was wrong with him?”
“Not an iota.”
“Well, couldn’t we have a word or two with Miss Agatha Wilson? The nurse would certainly have his nursing charts all handy.”
“Of course,” Captain Malta said suddenly and grimly. “We’ve been fools! Of course that’s it! This all began when MacFerson reported in. Up to that time, obviously, there had been no intimation of any disaster. Venner was going about his business normally here. But after MacFerson reported in, things began to pop.”
“I don’t quite get it, Captain,” Nick said.
“Don’t you see, Adams? A dying man always relieves his sinful soul, and if MacFerson were part of this plot, or even were aware of it, he might have poured out his soul to Venner and revealed the very crux we’re after. Consider it, Venner’s isolating him, the secrecy involved, Venner rushing downtown, seeing Wing, speaking of disaster, trying to find you, finally wirelessing you in desperation. It all goes back to this MacFerson patient and stops. There is nothing beyond MacFerson.”
“In that case, let’s see the man or corpse as the case may be,” Nick said, jumping to his feet. “And Miss Wilson should be able to unburden herself to a great extent. Where is Isolation, Captain?”
Isolation was on the third floor. They took the elevator up, and reported to a Dr. Hugh Hollister, a grumpy little man with spectacles and a reddish mustache. He and Malta seemed to know each other.
“It’s Venner’s patient, Hugh,” Captain Malta said. “The Robert MacFerson in Isolation. I beg your pardon, this is Nicholas Adams of the C.I. offices. Adams, this is Dr. Hollister, in charge here now.”
“How do, Doctor,” Hollister grumbled. “Glad to meet you. Heard a lot about you. If you want to see MacFerson you’re out of luck.”
Nick’s heart fell. “Even if he’s dead—”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” said Hollister. “But I’m damn sick of John’s hocus-pocus on this thing. Why, he left strict orders that no one was to take a look at MacFerson unless he ordered it in writing. And since he’s the commanding officer, that’s the way it was. Of course, Wilson was his pet nurse, and he trusted her implicitly, along with Woolton.”
“I’d like to talk with her,” said Nick.
“You can’t,” said Hollister. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Captain Malta said sharply. “What the devil are you talking about, Hugh? Gone where?”
“Well, you don’t have to be popping off at me! Tell it to John Venner! It’s all his fault, this whole abracadabra. Agatha Wilson went out with MacFerson, about an hour ago.”
“With MacFerson?” Nick exclaimed, appalled.
“Are you surprised?” Dr. Hollister grumbled. “My word, I’d have expected you, at least, to know all about it. MacFerson was switched down to the Cardwell Institute laboratories for further treatment. Don’t ask me what kind of treatment, I don’t even know what was wrong with him. All I know is an efficient sort of snob from the government offices, a colonel at that, came in here with a release for the patient signed by John Venner, along with credentials from the Cardwell Institute verifying MacFerson’s removal and admittance to the C.I. labs.”