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.
Tex crept up to the door nearer her and gently pushed against it. It gave silently under her weight. Quickly, quietly she stepped into the long, low-ceilinged room into which it directly opened, her bead bag hugged under her left arm. She blinked at the sudden light although it was only a feeble flicker from three tallow candles that hung in a rusty iron chandelier suspended from a single wooden beam that ran the length of the room.
Swiftly she took in her surroundings. In a shrouded corner was a cot with something moaning under a pair of soiled blankets. Near it drooped the girl with the bracelets, sobbing softly in a suppressed sort of hopelessness.
Tex closed the door quietly and advanced toward the cot.
At the slight sound of her steps the girl looked up, her eyes widening in terror, her narrow white hands flying to her mouth to stifle the cry that sprang to her lips, the bracelets crowding together, clicking, clanking. Then the fear slowly faded from the girl’s face. “Oh, it’s — you,” she said dully.
Tex nodded and grinned. “Sure.” She slid a little nearer and stared down at the white face on the pillow. “Arthur Hewett,” she whispered. “Doped and kept doped for days,” she added to herself.
At that the girl seemed to waken as from heavy stupor. “How did you know? Who are you?” She sprang up facing Tex.
Tex thought rapidly. She must move cautiously — and — quickly. The girl was suspicious, yet Tex felt that through her she would gain the key to the mystery.
“He looks like his pitcher, don’t he?” Tex answered the first question, ignoring the second. She lolled against the burnt brick wall, swinging her bag back and forth, searching furtively the other three corners of the room. “Gotter swig er hooch round this heah dump?” she finally asked, turning back to the girl.
The girl shook her head, slumping back into the chair, her long fingers playing nervously with her bracelets.
“Now, ain’t that too bad?” murmured Tex, watching her from under lowered lids. “My, ain’t them bracelets pretty?” She stretched an experimental hand toward the girl’s left wrist.
The girl drew back sharply, alarm in her shadowed eyes, her fingers curling protectively around the eight circlets.
Tex assumed a sullen tone. “Ah — what’d’yuh take me fur? A cheap dip?” She glanced toward the two doors. “Hell! Ah’d give mah best gold inlay fur a shot er hooch.”
A pale little smile hovered around the girl’s lips. “I’m sorry — but there isn’t any here — only—” She chopped her sentence off abruptly with a little gasp of fright.
“Only what?” prodded Tex quietly, successfully cloaking her eagerness. “If thar’s anything that’ll take the place — er hooch — hand it ovah, honey, ’cause Ah’m lower than a snake’s hips.”
“Snakes!” whispered the girl in deadly fear, and Tex leaned toward her suddenly.
“Gawd! Thar ain’t no snakes — heah?” Under the pretense of dismay she studied the girl intently. Snakes? The deaths of Hewett and Bobbie strangely resembled the deadly bites of rattlers. The swollen limbs; the discolored flesh; the almost invisible twin red marks on the left wrists. And yet there had been no snakes.
The girl recovered herself and regarded Tex a little doubtfully. “No... no... of course not.” She turned to soothe the moaning man with gently caressing hands, the bracelets huddling down toward her slender hand. She turned back to Tex. “How did you know of this place?” she demanded unexpectedly, a sharp note in her usually low tones.
Tex didn’t answer at once. Instead she hitched a little nearer to the bed, keeping her back to the wall, facing the two doors. “Listen, honey,” she murmured at last, “Ah come heah to help you.” A crooning note slid into her throaty voice and she glanced significantly toward the wasted form of Arthur Hewett.
The girl’s eyes followed hers and returned, poignant pain suffusing their shadowed depths. She gazed up at Tex, hesitating, seeming to consider.
And Tex waited, outwardly calm, in no hurry. Inwardly at a high-pitched, nervous tension, her ears cocked for any outside disturbance, her eyes darting to the doors, the windows, around the room, back to the girl and the moaning man. If, as she surmised, the girl was weak, guarding some secret, through love — or fear — she would break under Tex’s soft persuasion.
“Oh, I’m afraid — afraid.” The words were so low Tex had to stoop to catch them.
The girl clasped her hands tightly in her lap and swayed back and forth.
“Afraid of what — of — who?” prompted Tex. Lord, if the girl would only hurry! A cold feeling of playing for time shivered through her. She hugged her bag more closely under her left arm, the fingers of her right hand curling about the broken clasp. Seconds seemed to leap at her — crowding... crowding—
Presently the girl spoke, her words low, halting — as if being dragged through unwilling lips. “Oh, if you could take — Arthur away... away — where it’s safe... safe.” She stared up at Tex, repeating the last word in a sort of frenzied appeal.
Tex suddenly put out her hand and grasped the girl’s left wrist. The bracelets slid away from her fingers, slipping along the girl’s arm as if they were something animate — alive.
For an instant the very intensity of her gaze held the girl irresolute, tractable, willing. “Ah’ll take Arthur where it’s safe — but — first — you must tell me about — these.” She gave the girl’s arm a little shake before letting go and the bracelets rattled together.
“I... can’t. I’m... afraid—” Her voice trailed off into a sobbing whisper.
“For Arthur!” There was a breathless urgency to Tex’s guarded tones as her eyes glanced from the doors to the girl and back again.
“For Arthur!” echoed the girl, a curious little trill creeping into her voice. Her teeth bit into her lower lip and her long, thin fingers twined about the bracelets. She looked down at her restless hands while her words jerked out, automatically, as if some irresistible force were driving her. “I came from a little country town — two years ago. I couldn’t get work — and — Jefe found me — starving. He planted me in — Melville Hewett’s home — as a maid. Then Mr. Hewett made me his ward. I guess he felt sorry for me — and — he was so good to me — I... I... didn’t want to go on — but I was afraid — of... Jefe—”
“Go on with what?” interrupted Tex, every faculty strained for the slightest sound of movement from the stillness of the desert. The shadowy room, like herself, seemed to be holding its breath — waiting... waiting—
The girl sent her a lightning glance of doubt, then went on, a new note calming her voice. A note of fatality — resignation. “Go on with the plans to rob Mr. Hewett — then — I — met — Arthur—” She turned her attention to the man on the cot, seeming to forget everything else. “They have kept him under morphine — to try to make him sign—”
“Sign what?” Tex shifted her position a little, her eyes on the doors.
“The paper — that Jefe had drawn up in his own name—”
“Then Arthur inherited his father’s fortune?” Tex asked the question out of the side of her mouth. Her vigilance was directed toward an almost inaudible sound just beyond the doors.
“Yes.”
“And after he signs they intend to—”
“Yes... yes. Oh, God!” The girl’s voice rose to a high key of hysteria.
“Sh—” Tex wheeled on her suddenly, a cautioning finger to her lips. “Quick! Tell me what you’re hiding!” she whispered, her fingers pressing into the girl’s arm.