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.
“Read that, Race. Read all The Flame wrote.”
He picked up the phone, and I heard him say, “Roosevelt Field airstation. Damn the number! This is police headquarters.”
But I was reading the closely and hastily written letter The Flame had left for me. It started bluntly enough — but here it is.
“I love you, Race.
“What a beginning for the last will and testament of The Flame. At least, the last if you should read this.
“I am going back a great many years. I never knew my real father or mother. I was brought up in an orphanage outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. But in that orphanage I had a mother’s love. It was my sister who stood between me and the heartaches, and even the brutality of the institutions of those days. She gave up opportunities of adoption, suffered undeserved punishments, to give herself a bad name so that she would not be taken from me. For she was not the incorrigible girl the orphanage authorities painted her. She was good and kind and beautiful, and the criminal instinct in my mind was not in hers.
“She was older than I... much older. Then one day a lady took me away. That was Mrs. Drummond. A kind, wealthy, and somewhat foolish widow. She believed those stories about my sister — that she was bad, and never let me see her or speak of her.
“Then Mrs. Drummond married Lu Roper, and later she died — an unhappy woman. I called him my stepfather. If Lu Roper did not actually plant the seed of crime in my childish mind, at least he developed it to its present perfection. But he is dead now. Criminal! Murderer! Gang leader! You remember him.
“I learned later that my sister escaped from the orphanage — ran away when she was held illegally after coming of age. She never knew what became of me. I never knew what became of her — except, that it was charged that she took money with her from that orphanage, which charge I never did believe. I never tried to find her. I never wished to find her. It would have broken her heart to know that I wear — and deservedly wear — the name: The Girl with the Criminal Mind.
“Things were done rather shabbily back when I was adopted. And that’s why I did not inherit the money from Mrs. Drummond that I should have received. But other things were brought up in that fight for Mrs. Drummond’s wealth.
“One man, Race — a fair and honest man — in his pursuit of Doctor Michelle Gorgon, came as far as that court when Mrs. Drummond’s money was being kept from me. He was a clever, determined man. I joined forces, to a certain extent, with this man — but why hide his name? He will tell you now. He was Detective Sergeant O’Rourke. And this is what he discovered:
“The wife of Michelle Gorgon was my sister. And Michelle Gorgon had taken her in an airplane, and—. But you know that terrible story. Michelle Gorgon didn’t expect my sister would live. But she did live, maimed and twisted in body; wracked and dead of mind. He did this because she was going to leave him — for another man — some one she loved only in her heart and soul, and would love only so — until she was free of her husband, Michelle Gorgon.
“So I went in with O’Rourke and Colonel McBride. Such is my mind. I wanted — not justice, Race — but vengeance, I guess.
“And I learned who Michelle Gorgon really was. I learned who Giovoni was. He was an Italian criminal, known as ‘The Devil’ years ago. I gave Giovoni into the hands of Colonel McBride, but I didn’t tell him all I knew. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Until I was sure that the so-called Michelle Gorgon had purposely planned my sister’s terrible ‘accident.’ Rudolph Myer helped me, but until tonight I didn’t suspect how much he really understood.
“Toney, the little drug addict, came over on the boat from Italy with the Gorgon brothers twenty-three years ago. He knew the truth. There was no Michelle Gorgon. Michelle Gorgon met his death in Naples, beneath a train, twenty-three years before. And it was the escaped murderer of Giovoni’s daughter, Rose Marie — Nicholas Tremporia — who took his place. He came to America as Michelle Gorgon — or Gorgonette — as the Gorgon brothers were then called.
“The immigration laws were not so strict in those days. Michelle Gorgon’s body was mangled beyond recognition by the train, and it was wearing Nicholas Tremporia’s clothes and carrying Nicholas Tremporia’s papers and little possessions — which gives the idea that, perhaps, after all, the death of Michelle Gorgon was not an accident — but that he was laid, drugged, upon the tracks by Joe Gorgon and Nicholas Tremporia, as Eddie was but a child then. For Michelle Gorgon had money; had a good reputation in his home town. And, again, what points to his murder is the fact that Joe Gorgon was as much upset by the coming of Giovoni as was his supposed brother, Michelle. Let us still, for clearness, call him Michelle.
“So much for that. I did not tell what I knew to Colonel McBride. Toney did not tell what he knew to Colonel McBride. We left it in the hands of Giovoni to identify the murderer of his daughter.
“After Giovoni died and Michelle Gorgon thought himself safe, I began to hound him — with telephone calls — little notes, which, if another found them, would mean his end. Each night I’d send him a note, that read:
“THE SOUL OF ROSE MARIE CRIES OUT FOR VENGEANCE
— MR. NICHOLAS TREMPORIA.
I paused a moment in reading the letter. I recalled the note Michelle Gorgon had shown me — the words that were erased at the end of it, and knew they were the three words he feared so much. MR. NICHOLAS TREMPORIA.
O’Rourke was still telephoning. I heard him calling the airport at Newark. I went on reading.
“I know now that my sister is dead. I know now that Rudolph Myer sold me out. I know that — because Sergeant O’Rourke telephoned me that Michelle knew it was I who held his secret. But I am not certain that it can be proven, now, that Michelle Gorgon is really Nicholas Tremporia.
“I know too, Race, that if ever you read this it is Goodbye. For I have just received word from Michelle Gorgon to meet him at the airport. He knows, now, that I was the voice on the wire — that I sent him those notes — and no doubt knows, too, that his wife was my sister. But he doesn’t know that I know he knows. Yes — I am going with him. If he plans my death, he will perhaps tell me the truth first — that he purposely maimed his wife — my sister. He may gloat over his vengeance on me. But it will be worth death to—.
“I love you, Race. Since you are reading this note; since you have kept your word with me. Since your honor would forbid you opening this letter after reading what was on the envelope — until now. Goodbye. Look for my body in Northern Westchester. But let me hope it will not lie there alone.
“To the End,
“The Girl with the
Criminal Mind,
“FLORENCE.”
Chapter XXXI
Death from the Sky
I laid down the letter and looked at O’Rourke. He was still telephoning, madly.
“Newark airport, yeah. Michelle Gorgon — no. Not at all. I—” And down went the receiver.
It wasn’t the time yet to have things out with O’Rourke. The Flame was dead. She had more than hinted as much. But she couldn’t be if she had only left the apartment a short while before. Another thing in that letter struck me. “Since your honor would forbid you opening this letter after reading what was on the envelope.”