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.
Captain Malta made no comment. His silence was one of dismay. They turned into Bishop Street and proceeded to the address. They found that the constabulary had already done an excellent piece of work. The street was roped off on either side, and the quarantine fumigating equipment stood by, waiting, the truck with the big pumps, hoses and cylinders of deadly hydrocyanic gas.
A tall dignified man with a fine mustache met Malta, and the captain introduced the newcomer as Major Henry Dinwoody, commanding the soldiers who had been rushed to the scene. “We must move quickly,” Dinwoody said. “It’s possible they aren’t aware of us yet. This was done quickly and quietly.”
“Is the rear covered?” Nick asked.
“Quite thoroughly.”
“And they aren’t aware?”
“No, Doctor,” Dinwoody said. “They are loading small crates into the trucks.”
Nick shuddered and said: “Let’s go, Captain. Don’t storm the place, Major. Just make certain that no one leaves the front entrance. And have the fumigating crew ready to pump. If there are any other people in these shops along the way, get them out, and force them to leave until we are finished. It will take time.”
Captain Malta joined Nick. They were directed to the alley, followed it in the dark until they reached the area way behind the stores. They approached the rear of Laboratories Limited, and were quietly halted by a tough sergeant, looking queer with white gloves and white leggings. He recognized Malta and apologized. They had reached the line.
“What arrangements have you made?” Captain Malta asked the sergeant.
“I blow my whistle and we go in with the bayonet,” the sergeant said. He was very tall.
Nick watched. Bare-legged, bare-armed coolies, who didn’t even realize what they were doing, earning their daily shilling, were bringing small wire-netted crates from the sliding rear door of the building and piling them one on top of the other in the rear of the various trucks.
Close by the door, his arms folded stoically, stood a little man. Nick assumed it was the same Mr. Kita whose name adorned the trucks.
Captain Malta passed a pistol and a flashlight to Nick. Nick rejected the pistol. — “Never killed a man in my life” — but took the torch. Nick said: “No point waiting, Captain. Leave the trucks as they are; don’t have your men touch them. Take every man in sight prisoner. The important thing is for me to get inside and seal that building. This is it, no doubt of it.”
“Blow your whistle, Sergeant,” Captain Malta said.
The sergeant took a breath and blew piercingly on his whistle. Soldiers evolved out of the darkness in more quantity than Nick had ever expected. He found himself running, right in the vanguard, striving for the open door before Kita leaped in and closed it. There would be the devil to pay if they couldn’t get in.
Kita, surprised by the whistle and the sudden rush of men, threw his head one way and another and started shooting. Nick had not even seen him take a gun out, but the shots were vivid enough. His stomach was terrified, a rocklike knob, but his legs kept moving and his head was cool enough. He had a momentary vision as he approached the door of Kita pointing a gun almost directly into his face. It couldn’t happen to me, Nick thought in a flash, not me!
Captain Malta, just behind him, fired at Kita and killed the Jap before Kita ever pulled his trigger. The proximity of Malta’s pistol to Nick’s ear was such that Nick thought he had burst an eardrum. His left ear rang and kept ringing but other than that internal ring, it was as deaf as a stone. He saw the coolies yelling and chattering in a frantic fear. They were quickly taken, no resistance offered. Poor souls, he thought, they’ve lived with death tonight and don’t even know it. He wondered how many of them had been infected by the valveless epipharynx of the plague flea.
When he reached the door, he turned and went in. It was damned reassuring to have a man like Captain Malta at his side. The place was well lighted when they went in, but almost instantly, the fluorescent tubes died, and the building plunged into darkness. Nick had had a quick vision of the interior, and the room in which he stood he knew to be a former loft, now containing shelves in quantity separated by little alleys, and the shelves which rose from the floor to a six-foot height were filled with meshed cages in which the oddly sinister scuffle of the rats could be heard. Some of the beasts were squealing. It was ugly.
“There’s a staircase on the left,” Nick panted. “Must go up to the laboratory itself. No one can get out?”
“No one,” Captain Malta said grimly.
“I’ll take the staircase, they must be up there!”
“Let me go first, Adams, you’re not armed!”
“No, no, it’s all right.”
Nick found the staircase with his electric torch. The stairs were old and creaky and he heard each one of his own steps as he ascended. A voice ahead of him called, “Adams?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
A rough hard hand grasped him, swung him around and pulled him. The torch fell from his hand. Nick felt the cold barrel of a gun against his cheek — in the dark his assailant had meant for it to be against his head. There was a grunt. He heard Captain Malta trip on the stairs and curse. Then Malta called: “Adams, are you safe?”
Nick’s assailant said: “Is that you, Malta?”
“Yes.”
“I want safe conduct,” the man said. He was strong. “This is Zeller speaking. I’m holding Adams here. If you don’t give me safe conduct, I’ll kill him. I’ll take him with me and release him when I get clear.”
“Has he got you, Doctor?”
It occurred to Nick that he had a golden opportunity. The gun was hard against his cheek. He jerked his head backwards and found the right side of Zeller’s thumb cushion against his mouth. He bit it as savagely as any animal, and he felt his teeth go deep. Zeller roared at the pain and futilely pounded Nick’s back with his fist. Then Captain Malta’s torch spotlighted them both. At that moment, the pressure of Nick’s teeth opening the muscles of Zeller’s hand, Zeller dropped his gun. It clattered down the stairs. Captain Malta raised his gun as Nick released Zeller’s hand.
“Kamerad,” Zeller said. He did not raise his hands. He shook the one which had been bitten. “Kamerad, Malta. I am taken.” He said it very quickly, not frightened, but quickly nevertheless, for Malta was not being merciful in the press of things.
“This is a dangerous man,” Captain Malta said, “and I don’t want to lose him in this melee. Can you wait a few seconds, Adams, while I deliver him to a guard downstairs?”
“Go ahead, I’ll wait.”
A gun in his back, Fritz Zeller said, his voice ugly: “I trust you have not infected me, Adams.”
“You never know,” Nick said. “Better have a Pasteur treatment, although a chap like yourself should certainly have built up an immunization against rabies.”
“We should have wiped you off early,” Zeller said. He went down the stairs with Malta behind him, grumbling something about the damned stubborn Dutchman.
Alone, Nick Adams stood on the landing. His eyes had become more accustomed to the darkness, and that, coupled with the reflection of the electric torches on the floor of the loft below, showed him a door with an opaque glass upper half, marked Private and closed. He was wary. Then he called: “Paul! Paul Cameron!”