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.
“Stick around,” I told Jerry. “If you see any one you fancy, follow him and give me a report later.” And as Jerry grinned up at me, I gave him the orders he liked so well. “On your own, Jerry,” I said, “Scout around the block behind, if you like.”
“Right’o, Boss.” Jerry half raised a hand in salute. And I turned the corner and walked toward 137. Nearly half a short block, it was, and I’m telling you that, for some reason, no one ever found a block so enmeshed with danger, maybe imaginary danger. But you’ve got to admit that since I was in this case every trick had been taken by the Gorgons. And now the fear, well, I won’t admit the word fear, maybe, but anyway, the apprehension that the Gorgons were about to take another trick — yep, in spite of the fact that a bulky shadow, without an attempt at concealment, was crossing the street before I got halfway down the block. And that bulky shadow had all the earmarks of a headquarters detective.
So things were safe enough from that position. I spun on my heel and turned quickly back, slipping close to the shadows of the old houses. Once I looked over my shoulder. The man was hurrying toward me. I increased my pace, reached the corner again and turned it quickly, paused by the building and stuck my eye back down the street.
The man was on my side of the street now, on the house No. 137’s side. He had his hat in his hand and was scratching his head. Twice he stepped toward the corner and twice he drew back again. I couldn’t even see his face, yet I thought that I could read his mind. He was told to watch that house, to watch who came to it. It wasn’t up to him to think for himself.
Finally he hurried back down the street, paused for a moment before 137, and then quickly crossed the street and hurried up the steps of the house opposite. I smiled at that. It struck me that I was to gather the impression that he was an ordinary householder, going home, while he watched me from the darkness of the doorway.
I shrugged my shoulders. There are front doors as well as back doors. After all, I might be wrong about this watcher. But anyway, I wanted my visit to be private.
My car was still parked in the middle of the block, but Jerry was gone. I knew Jerry’s way. He’d walk clean around that block. I skipped down to the next side street. It wouldn’t be so hard to measure off the distance, slip down an alley, straddle a fence and drop into the rear yard of 137.
But I didn’t do that little thing. Just about where I guessed the house behind 137 should be two figures emerged and crossed quickly to a big sedan parked by the curb. You could clearly make the figures out, though to recognize them was not so easy. There was not enough light. But one was big enough to be Colonel Charles Halsey McBride.
As that black sedan door opened, the smaller one of the two men paused, drew back a bit and quickly shoved off the arm of the other, that clutched at his. I jerked out a gun and ran down the street.
One of those two men, the one I thought my client, the Colonel, had thrown up his hands and cried out. A figure had suddenly jumped from the closed car and clutched him. Two other shadows bounded down the steps from a dark vestibule and were on him from behind. Almost in the time it takes to tell it, that one man was bundled into the car and the other man had escaped and was running down the street, away from me.
There was no chance to overtake that car. It had jumped ahead in second gear and was dashing down the block. I saw it swing into Broadway under a light, sway perilously as it turned left, and disappeared from view. But I thought too that I saw a slim, boyish form come from an areaway and start in pursuit of the man who had fled. And with a little gulp of satisfaction I thought that I recognized that slim pursuing figure as my assistant, Jerry.
Now, I could have gotten the man who ran down the block in the same direction the fleeing car had taken. He wasn’t very fast, and slightly bent, and rather uncertain.
But just as I took out after him came more trouble from behind me. I heard the tires skid as a car turned the corner from the same direction I had come. I jumped quickly for the first retreat. A two foot drop into a basement entrance. Turning, I leveled my gun as the car screeched to a stop at the curb. The occupants of that car had seen me all right, for two men hopped to the street.
I put my gun in my pocket and called out to the broad shouldered man who was slipping along with his back close to the building, toward my hiding place. I had gotten a good look at his map.
“Glory be to God, Race Williams,” said Sergeant O’Rourke. “Surely it’s not you that’s making all this disturbance! You’ll be the bloke that started down the street a few minutes ago, just before the light flashed.”
“What light?” I asked him.
“The... well... the Colonel’s. If he needed help he had only to flash his light on and off in the front room, where he sleeps. And he did just that.”
“When?” I asked.
“Less than three minutes ago.”
I counted up quickly. The time to leave his room, go down the stairs, pass through the lower floor into the back yard, climb the high fence that must be there and pass through the alley to the street. And he hadn’t left that alley in a hurry. Just a slow walk, and—.
“He couldn’t have flashed a light in his front room,” I told O’Rourke, “less than three minutes ago.”
“But he did.” O’Rourke nodded emphatically as he grinned. “I had me own eyes on it. I thought maybe the — some one might try and pay him a visit, so I left the way open for an ‘in,’ you understand. Not an ‘out.’ And it’ll be about three minutes, now, since the light flashed. The boys will be playing the front door, while we take the back. Come on, Race. The Colonel will be safe as a fiddle, with his door locked and his gun in his hand and the police busting in. Make it snappy. I’ve got a few boys across from the front of the house who’ll be in by now. I took no chances.”
I grabbed O’Rourke’s arm as I followed him into the alley, two other dicks closing in behind us. And I told him what I had seen, watched his feet hesitate, watched his hands that were gripping the high fence let go their hold, as the full significance of what I said caught him.
“You don’t think one of those men was the Colonel?” O’Rourke asked anxiously; then shaking me, “You do?”
“I do.” I gave him the truth.
“Did the other man have a gun in his ribs and—? But he couldn’t. The Colonel’s door was heavy. Two windows facing on the street with a man below them and one in the house across the way, watching. No, he wouldn’t open that door for any one. That, he promised me. But come on. Maybe it was—”
“Two other fellows,” I started sarcastically, and stopped. What was the good of riding O’Rourke now? If damage was done, it was done. And, another thing. It struck me suddenly. O’Rourke, or no one else, could have prevented the man leaving that house. Certainly, if it was the Colonel, he went of his own free will. Maybe, under some threat, maybe, under some promise, maybe, with some one he trusted. Maybe—. But the light! If he had flashed the light as the pre-prepared signal to O’Rourke, then he had gone in fear. But that light! He wouldn’t have had time. And I gave it up. We were over the fence, in the yard, at the foot of the steps leading to the back door.
O’Rourke gave his orders in a low voice. Placing men carefully to watch the cellar windows, and then growling roughly for me to come on, he climbed the steps to the rear kitchen door — found it open and entered the house.
Lights were blazing now. Flatties pounded through the rooms. Some of them I knew, some I didn’t. Some were the best detectives on the city Force. A tall, straight figure with iron gray hair spoke to O’Rourke.