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.
Yep, a forty-four is a mighty handy weapon, even if old fashioned. My bullet had gone through the fleshy part of McBride’s arm as if it were papier-mâché, and landing in Joe’s shoulder had knocked him back, just as if you’d hit him with a battering ram.
But it was McBride I was thinking of. He was so white and silent. The blood was pouring from his arm just above the elbow. An awkward place to tackle, but I did the best I could to make a tourniquet with my handkerchief and pencil as I blew frantically upon the police whistle. Police whistle! Imagine it! I never thought I’d have use for one of those things. But now, I was glad O’Rourke had forced it on me. The thing was over! McBride was safe, and Joe Gorgon—. Already his body was cold enough for little devils to be skating on his chest.
They came. Haifa dozen plainclothesmen, a police surgeon, and O’Rourke leading them.
“I had a doctor in the car,” O’Rourke said, “though I should have brought an undertaker. Joe’s dead of course. And he got McBride first!”
“He did not!” I told O’Rourke emphatically.
Then I explained the necessity of plugging McBride, felt O’Rourke dabbing at my neck with a handkerchief, and for the first time realized that the warm stream running under my collar was not perspiration, but blood, and that the bullet had been closer to doing me in than I thought, for the wound was along the side of my neck and not my cheek. Queer, that? Maybe. But queer or not, it was the truth just the same. I guess it’s much easier to see where you plug another guy than to know where you’re hit yourself. But why bother? After the police surgeon had fixed up McBride I let him play around my neck. And he did. With a gallon or two of iodine, and a lot of conversation as to what might have happened if the bullet had been a fraction of an inch to the right.
Chapter XXX
A Letter from the Dead
McBride came around in that little office up stairs and talked a bit. I listened but didn’t get it at all.
“I never told him,” Colonel McBride said over and over, until he seemed to get his bearings better. “Joe Gorgon threatened me and struck me with his gun while my hands and feet were bound. And then he decided to go after me in earnest. A hot iron that he heated in the little stove up stairs. It was the shot that saved me, for he stopped and listened. Then untied my feet, and with a gun pressed against my back led me to the elevator.”
“Yes, we know all that,” I cut in. That wasn’t very important now. “How did they get you here — Rudolph Myer, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, though he may be an innocent party to it. He came to me and said that the girl had decided to talk. That she would tell me everything. That she was waiting in the car on the street behind. That seemed right. She had promised to come to my house. Promised to, at least—”
“What girl?” I asked quickly.
“The Flame, of course. She—”
But O’Rourke was at him — shutting him up — speaking hurriedly.
I turned on O’Rourke.
“The Flame? She knows! The voice on the wire that so worried Michelle Gorgon; the cracked voice of a man trying to imitate a woman. The Flame? Why, she’s going to marry Michelle Gorgon. She’s—. Come, O’Rourke, out with it.”
“Now, now, Race.” And as two white coated lads came in with a stretcher for Colonel McBride, O’Rourke finished, “I guess it’s time you knew everything, but it’s not for me to tell you. I passed my word to The Flame. Come, we’ll go up to her apartment and see her. Tut, tut, don’t look at me like that, Race. She’ll be expecting us.”
And up to her apartment we did go. And maybe I did look at him “like that.” Like what? Oh, like anything O’Rourke thought I looked like.
Think! The Flame had said, “Think.” And the one thing I couldn’t do as we made that trip up Park Avenue was — think.
This time we drove straight to the door of the flashy apartment. The dawn was breaking in the sky. Brophey, the detective who had been at McBride’s house after his disappearance, stepped from the shadows and saluted O’Rourke. O’Rourke explained the dick’s presence before the apartment to me.
“When I left you in the car by the drug store,” he said, “I made a couple of calls. One, was to cover this apartment and drag in Michelle Gorgon.”
“On what charge?”
“The murder of his wife,” said O’Rourke. “I couldn’t think of any better charge, and even if I couldn’t hold him it wouldn’t look so bad. Prussic acid is hard to buy — especially by a crippled, half witted woman who has never been on the street alone since her — her accident.”
“I think that was a mistake,” I told O’Rourke, and meant it.
“I had another reason. I had to do it to protect The Flame. Any luck, Brophey?” he asked the dick.
“Doctor Michelle Gorgon has not come in,” Brophey said, “And The Fla — Miss Drummond has not gone out — at least, since I’ve been here.”
“Good!” said O’Rourke as we passed into the apartment house. “We’ll see The Flame.” And as I started to question him again, “Just a jaunt to the twelfth floor, Race, then it’s up to her.”
The night man didn’t like the hour we sought The Flame. O’Rourke didn’t argue. He showed his badge, pushed the elevator man, John, back and said, “Twelfth floor, and no lip.”
Another plainclothesman, who was sitting on the cold stairs beside the elevator, came to his feet when we reached the twelfth floor. O’Rourke was thorough, anyway. But certainly Michelle Gorgon would get wind of the police display and not return. I said as much to O’Rourke.
“I didn’t want him to return,” said O’Rourke. “I didn’t want to make the pinch unless he came here for The Flame. I’d of had to pinch him to save her. Anything stirring, Cohen?”
“Not a thing,” said Cohen. “No one in or out of 12-D since I’ve been here.”
It took time to get into that apartment. At last the colored maid, Lillian, opened the door.
“Miss Drummond?” said O’Rourke. “Miss—” And the girl didn’t have to tell us. We both read it in her face. But when she came out with it, it startled me just the same. Florence, The Flame, had received a telephone call and left the house, perhaps a half hour earlier.
“Just before the boys got here,” said O’Rourke, the mental figuring showing on his face.
“Miss Florence left a letter for a Mr. Williams—” the maid started, but O’Rourke had shoved by her and was into the living room, snatching an envelope quickly from the table. He held it a moment in his hand, then tore it open. When I followed him and grabbed at his arm, he said:
“All right, it’s for you.” He chucked the envelope in the basket and handed me several sheets of paper. Then he turned to the maid. She was frightened. She was talking.
“You’re the police, ain’t you, Mister?” she said to O’Rourke. “Well, Miss Florence acted funny. There were two telephone calls. The first woke me up. I didn’t hear what she said.”
“That would be my call.” O’Rourke thought aloud.
“The second call came right after it,” the maid went on. “I didn’t try to listen but I couldn’t help it.” Which meant she had her ear to the keyhole, I thought, but said nothing. “Of course I didn’t hear what came over that wire, but I heard Miss Florence say, ‘All right — the airport.’ ”
“What airport— My God! What airport?” And O’Rourke was shaking her by the shoulders and saying over and over, “Good God! he’s going to do it again.” And suddenly, to me, when there was nothing more to get from the now thoroughly frightened maid: