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.
It was good stuff. The doctor didn’t seem so cocky. Oh, his dignity was still there, but it had dents all over it. Finally he won out, and said:
“Are you hinting that my cupidity made me, made me take in this unfortunate woman?”
“I’m hinting at nothing,” said O’Rourke. “Doctor Gorgon buys what he wants. That woman’s life is in grave danger, and not from what’s ailing her. I came in, didn’t I? And he came in, didn’t he?” O’Rourke jerked a thumb at me. “Now, what’s to prevent some one else coming in, who hasn’t got the woman’s interest at heart, like us? And you can’t throw hard looks and pompous words down the muzzle of a murderer’s gun. Nor will they wait while you notify the nearest precinct.”
Doctor Revel had a mental picture of the stabbing at Elrod’s, I guess. A mental picture that for the first time he permitted himself to think might happen in his tony establishment. His placid map and dignity of bearing were playing him false.
“I never guessed. I didn’t know.” He wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. O’Rourke wasn’t a bad talker, a bad cop. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why—”
“Because I thought maybe you’d do just what you did do. Start the phone working. Get the newspapers into it, and—”
“The papers? The newspapers? The woman must go, of course. She’s strong enough to move. We can’t keep her here. She must go.” The doctor was getting panicky. The word “murder” had thrown him.
“I thought—” O’Rourke started — clamped his mouth shut again and looked down the hall.
The slow old fashioned elevator had come to a stop. The door opened almost silently and a figure stepped into the light. It was Doctor Michelle Gorgon. Malacca cane, gray suede gloves, black ribbon dangling from his glasses, and all.
Chapter XXIII
Doctor Michelle Gorgon
“Really,” Michelle Gorgon said when he reached us. “Doctor Revel, Mr. Williams, and our dear friend, Sergeant O’Rourke. Surely something must have happened. Not, Madame, not a bad turn. Not—”
“You’ll have to move your wife, Doctor Gorgon.” Doctor Revel got that off first crack. “We can’t have a scandal here. We—”
“Scandal! You will explain yourself, Doctor.” And Michelle Gorgon’s voice was just the right pitch, just the right touch of doubtful indignation.
O’Rourke didn’t try to stop Revel. I guess it would have been useless just then.
“Sergeant O’Rourke tells me that your wife — that she may be murdered here, and—”
“Good Lord! an attempt on her life.” Michelle Gorgon clutched at his heart — and, damn it! looked as if he meant it.
“No — no. But there will be — there is to be—. Sergeant O’Rourke—”
And O’Rourke horned in.
“It’s like this,” he said easily. “I was tipped off that there would be, or might be, an attempt on her life. I came here to see that everything was right, just right. No objections to that, eh, Doctor Gorgon?”
“Most certainly not. Most commendable.” Michelle Gorgon nodded approval. “But, really, it seems absurd. Why should any one wish to harm her? Poor thing, she has not long for this world, I’m afraid.”
“Vengeance on you, Doctor,” said O’Rourke. “That might be it.”
“On me, on me. But surely. Ah! yes, I see. This imaginary hue and cry in the yellow sheets. Connecting me up with my brother’s activities. We make enemies in life, of course. We—” He put both hands to his head. Not tragically, not dramatically even — rather, a natural movement — which, if acting, was superb. “My wife, Madame. I shall see her. I shall comfort her.” This, as Madame called out.
And he did comfort her. At least he quieted her in the few minutes he was alone in the room with his wife, while we stood in the hall, Doctor Revel still insisting that the woman be moved, and O’Rourke just as insistent that she stay at the hospital.
“You can’t throw her out tonight. The papers would get hold of you and razz you. To move her would work right into their hands if—” And O’Rourke, seeing that that wasn’t a good line, killed it with a sudden snap to his lips. Doctor Revel was interested in human life, of course. But naturally he was interested in the reputation of his establishment. Certainly, any one will admit that a murder in his hospital wouldn’t help business any.
“I’ll tell you,” said O’Rourke. “I could put a couple of men in the house for you, or better still, one inside and one outside.”
“Wouldn’t that be conspicuous?” But Doctor Revel was coddling to the idea now.
“They’ll be in plain clothes. You might even tack a white coat on the inside one. He can stay by the woman’s door. That’ll protect your hospital, my reputation, and the woman’s life. But here’s Doctor Gorgon.” And O’Rourke turned and told Michelle Gorgon what was on his mind.
Michelle Gorgon seemed enthusiastic.
“Excellent, Sergeant. Madame won’t have to know, and won’t have to be unprotected. That is settled then, though I think and hope that Sergeant O’Rourke’s information about that unfortunate woman is — is erroneous. But you disturbed her, Sergeant. Oh, unintentionally, I know. What you said to her I could not discover, of course, from her. Her mind does not function coherently on the same thought for five minutes. Does it, Doctor?” He smiled encouragingly at Doctor Revel.
“She is lucid at times,” said Revel. “She talks often of some imaginary poet or musician whom she loves. She would rather die before he could see her as she is, and... and—. Huh... huh—” The doctor cleared his throat as Michelle Gorgon frowned slightly. “Nothing odd in that hallucination, sir. To the contrary, rather to be expected.”
“No,” O’Rourke whispered to me. “Nothing wrong in that, Race, because it happens to be the truth.”
Then the front doorbell rang, and a cop was at the door, and some explanations were in order in the little reception room below.
Michelle Gorgon insisted that Doctor Revel see the patient, Madame, once more before he left.
“It will ease my mind, Doctor,” Gorgon said. “It is some time since I was interested actively in medicine. I have brought her a few books, rather trashy, Doctor. Love stories, the old ten and fifteen cent variety. But she seems to be able to read them, or get snatches from them, for they ease her mind. Kindly let her have the light on until she becomes calmer. I do not wish to interfere, of course, with the regulations of the hospital, but she has been in the habit of awakening and reading until one-thirty, or playing at reading. She likes, too, to be alone when she reads. Miss Agnes can wait outside her door, or — as you see fit.”
Doctor Revel left us. Five minutes later he returned. Not a word had been spoken between us as we waited.
“Mrs. Gorgon is rather restless and disturbed, but didn’t wish to talk to me,” Doctor Revel told Michelle Gorgon.
“There is no danger!” Michelle Gorgon came to his feet. “Nothing—”
“If you mean that she may take a bad turn in the night. Certainly not. Not more than any other night. But I expect that she will have a restless night, a most unsatisfactory night.”
And he looked around at the three of us, seemingly to place the blame equally between us.
“May I drive you gentlemen home?” There was perhaps the slightest twist to Michelle Gorgon’s lips as he spoke.
“I’ll stay here for a bit,” said O’Rourke. And when Doctor Revel frowned, “Just till I get a man over. And I won’t disturb your patient further tonight.”
Michelle Gorgon looked at me.