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.
“You are acting rather childishly, Race Williams. Just a moment—” he cut that in quickly, as my fingers started to tighten and I started to talk. “Let me assure you,” he went on, “that all arrangements are made for such a contingency as this. I believe, if I wished, I could go through physical violence, even torture, with a silent tongue, but,” and he actually smiled, “I will not put myself to the test. I am just as determined a man as Colonel McBride. I imagine he has resisted pressure. But the point is — if you so much as close those fingers on my throat, the place will be alive with servants, not gunmen, maybe, but servants. I assure you that my system of protection here is unassailable.”
He didn’t speak like a man who was bluffing. He didn’t — I let go of his throat and stepped back. I had something else up my sleeve.
“You may be right,” I told him. “You may have a system that will protect you from physical violence. But what would prevent me placing a bullet smack between those cute eyes of yours?” Somehow, O’Rourke’s words crept in then.
“Well,” he smiled with his lips, and actually sipped the sherry, “you and I would call it, shall I say, ethics. My brothers would call it ‘lack of guts.’ And do you know, Williams, I think that my brothers would be right.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t. I was fingering my gun speculatively. Oh, it’s a weakness. I guess he was right, after all. It’s the “woman” in all of us. I just couldn’t bring myself to press that trigger and snuff him out. Couldn’t? And I wondered. The men he had murdered, the man, Colonel McBride, whom he now spoke of as being under “pressure,” which probably meant “torture.” And, I let the trigger of my gun slip back and forth slowly. Who was the woman he was going to marry? Was it The Flame? I half raised my gun.
Did he read what was in my face, or was there anything in my face? I don’t know, and so he couldn’t. But I have always had an idea that at that moment Doctor Gorgon was nearer to death than he ever was before. And so did he, for he cut in quickly, and his eyes blinked now.
“Also,” he said slowly, “it would be most disastrous for the Colonel, most disastrous.”
“What you’re telling me practically amounts to a confession.” I tried police work.
“Hardly.” And his smile came back as my gun went down on my knees. “Let us not be children at play. You knew that I knew where Colonel McBride was before you came here. O’Rourke knows that I know. At Albany they know that it is my hand that guides the destiny of our courts. The rookies on the police force know that, when a man dies who has displeased the right people, that it is the hand of a Gorgon who directs that death. But what does it avail them? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! Protection is money. I have that. Protection is influence. I have that. Protection is fear. I have established that. Big men have sought my influence because it gratifies their ambition. They have taken my money because it gratifies their greed. And they’ve taken my orders because they recognize fear. And I can gratify that emotion to the last degree.”
He was leaning forward now. And suddenly he unclosed his hand and hurled a bit of paper across the table at me. I unfolded it with my left hand as I watched him.
“The soul of Rose Marie cries out for vengeance,” was all that was now written on that paper. But a word, two words or perhaps three, following the word “vengeance” had been carefully erased.
And the face that I had seen once before in that room was looking at me now. The face I had seen that first night, when Michelle Gorgon found his wife in the library. The contorted, evil features that Michelle Gorgon couldn’t control. What a rotten soul the beast must have. The distorted mouth, the eyes now protruding, the lips quivering like an animal’s. Yep, Michelle Gorgon was just what Joe was, what Eddie had been. Just an underworld rat. And this time his face stayed coarse and evil when he spoke.
“I’ll give you one hundred thousand dollars for the name of the person who wrote that message, who for the past week has been sending those messages. Who—”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean!” He fairly cried out the words. “Who is it that rings the phone at night? Who is it that speaks that same message in the cracked voice of a man who tries to imitate a woman? Yet, it is a woman’s trick. But there can be no woman, no man either, no living man, now. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? No one in the world but myself knows who that — who Rose Marie is.”
“Your first wife, in Italy.” I tried to throw him.
He only laughed.
“McBride thinks of a first wife, in Italy. The shrewdest Italian detective on the Force has visited my home town in Italy, traced me until I left for America, traced every move I made since leaving the boat in New York, twenty-three years ago. But they know nothing. Giovoni told them nothing. Williams, I offer you one hundred thousand dollars for the name of the person behind McBride, behind O’Rourke. The person who tells them so much, but no more. The person who seeks a personal vengeance against me. The only thing in life I have feared. And I don’t know, don’t know who it is, nor why it is.”
“Rose Marie, eh?” I was looking at the name.
“Yes, Rose Marie. Let that help you. But, one hundred thousand dollars for the name of the person. It’s a lot of money.” He was calmer now. “I have the cash here, ready to pay. Crisp, new bills.”
“But suppose I don’t know who wrote it?” I wouldn’t admit I didn’t know, yet. Which, from his next words, was an unnecessary precaution on my part.
“Of course you don’t know. If you knew what this person—” he spread his arms far apart. “Colonel McBride don’t know, or he would have acted. But Colonel McBride knows who the person is, for that person gave him such information as he has. That person suddenly decided to work it alone. Yes, McBride knows who it is, and McBride won’t tell. Won’t tell yet.” A drawer in the table came open.
“One hundred thousand dollars. I have it here. It is yours if you will tell me the name of every one, and what’s taken place, to the least detail, since you entered this attempt to eliminate the Gorgons, last week.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“You’d be wasting your money,” I said, but I was trying to think. Was some one onto Michelle Gorgon? Did some one know what that little Italian, Giovoni, had known, and was that some one waiting to get a good price for that information from Colonel McBride? But that couldn’t be. If it was simply a question of money they’d blackmail Michelle Gorgon. So I tried that question on him while he seemed ready to talk.
“Has any one tried to shake you down?”
“No, no. There is something deeper than that, far deeper. I can not understand it. But this person who knows, keeps it, keeps the knowledge from all but me. Why? Why?”
“Why do you tell me, why put anything into my hands?”
“Put anything into your hands!” His voice was scornful. “McBride was told, and O’Rourke was told, that I murdered my wife back in Italy. They—. But no matter. You have been told it too. But like every other accusation against me, it fell through, when—”
“Giovoni died,” I tried.
Michelle Gorgon ignored that. He said:
“I tell you because, because it may be that such — certain information may come to you — and I assure you, Williams, that it will be to your best interests to sell that information to me. But some one told McBride of Giovoni, some one told McBride of — but no matter. The subject is dropped. You will remember it only when you wish money. If I could, could—” He took his head in his hands and pressed the temples at the sides.