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 perhaps five miles out of White Plains that I saw O’Rourke stick his head out of the window, then lean forward and tap the driver, Brophey, on the shoulder. The brakes ground; the car came to a stop just at a cross road. And that was the first time I came to life, and heard plainly the roar of a motor — an airplane motor.
Looking up I saw the plane. A biplane, pretty high. But even at that distance one could see that the motor was sputtering, and that the plane was circling. Then it suddenly dived, hesitated a moment, seemed to gain altitude and shoot toward the west and on a beeline with the road to our right.
And we were after it. A pitiful, hopeless little trio, in that modern invention known as the automobile, as helpless and as prehistoric as if we ran on foot, armed with huge clubs cut from the trees. Still, we sped down that road in the wake of the slowly diminishing plane.
Sixty! Sixty-five! A curve in the road, our wheels in the roadbed, a sudden jerk and we were straightened out again, with great empty fields behind the trees to our left. And again O’Rourke had tapped our driver, Brophey, on the shoulder. Again the brakes. This time we stopped beneath the shadows of a cluster of huge trees.
“Drive her off, in the grass there, out of the way,” said O’Rourke.
“Good God!” I said to O’Rourke, as we climbed from the car, “I know it’s no use and all that, but it seems like doing something to keep going. At least trying to save her life.”
O’Rourke spoke.
“Here, keep in the protection of those trees. I haven’t trailed Michelle Gorgon all these weeks without knowing his car when I see it. And that Rolls of his was parked in the field back there. Look!”
And I looked through the foliage. Yep, there was the outline of a car all right. But it wasn’t the car I looked at. It was the figure that stood so still beside a tree. A figure that seemed like part of the landscape, or a scarecrow. Then it moved, and I knew that it was human. The figure watched that plane, the plane which had turned now and was coming back over the field. And then I saw the flash. Not for certain, not for sure.
But O’Rourke cried out.
“The plane’s on fire, and some one is jumping.”
A far distant figure, with a great hump on its back, balanced, swayed, seemed to clutch at a wing — then pitched out, swung slowly and came hurtling toward the earth. I waited, breathless, for a sudden jerk of that body and the great silk of a parachute to check the flight, and send the form drifting gently to earth. But no parachute opened. The body began to turn rapidly now; hands gripped frantically at the air; even legs seemed to be attempting to entwine space.
“Good God!” said O’Rourke, “he’s thrown her from the plane, and—”
The falling body struck in some trees, went crashing through them, and I sunk my head in my arms. So, destruction and death! That was the end of The Flame — that was—.
“And he ain’t having such an easy time of it.” O’Rourke gripped me by the shoulder. “The plane’s on fire. Something’s gone wrong. Look! It’s out of control, entirely.”
And it was. Fascinated, I watched that plane. Twisting, turning, diving, ever falling — ever nearer to the ground — ever—. And it swerved suddenly, about a hundred feet from the ground — seemed to straighten, then shoot upward, dip again, and dash straight toward a clump of trees not a hundred yards away from us.
“You can’t do anything for — for her.” And the words choked in O’Rourke’s throat. “But him, the dirty, lousy murderer! We’ve got him red handed this time. In death The Flame gave him to us.”
And we were running across that field. I’m not sure just what happened. But I think the plane paused in its drop, turned its nose up so suddenly that you could hear struts hum — snap, even — and with a crash it dove smack into a tree, twisted slightly, seemed to fall, and hung there.
You could see it blazing now.
“Quick!” shouted O’Rourke, dashing by me. “The damn thing may blow up in a minute. We—”
“Let him burn to death,” I cried out, and the next instant thought better of it. I hurled O’Rourke from me as we reached the now blazing wreck, jumped and caught a branch, and swung myself into the tree beside the plane.
I saw it all, and didn’t care. I saw the jury filing from the room. I knew my story in that second’s flash. I’d say I thought that Michelle Gorgon had a gun in his hand — and I shot him in self-defense. For I was going to kill him — put a bullet right through his head before ever O’Rourke could stop me. Catch Michelle Gorgon for the murder of The Flame? Hang murder on such a notorious racketeer — who could influence judges, keep witnesses silent, intimidate jurors? No — he was going before a jury now that he couldn’t buy, couldn’t intimidate, a Judge he couldn’t fix.
And I saw him crouched there in the cock-pit. He’d know too. The flames flashed back suddenly, whipped by a touch of wind.
“All right, Doctor Michelle Gorgon,” I cried out, almost mad with rage and hate, and something else, something that made me half sob out the words before I killed him. But I wanted him to know. He must know. And he would know. For his body stirred, his head low on his chest beneath the helmet, tried to rise.
My right hand gripped my gun. My left hand stretched in, clutched at the face that was turned from me. I jerked that head around, and — and looked straight into the wide, questioning, frightened eyes of The Flame — Florence Drummond.
Chapter XXXII
The End of the Racket
I don’t know how I got The Flame out of that cock-pit. Maybe O’Rourke and Brophey did most of it. Maybe they didn’t. But, anyway, she was on the grass beside us.
O’Rourke was hollering something about water. Brophey was yapping about a flask in the car, and I held The Flame close in my arms.
“It wasn’t murder, Race,” she said over and over. “It wasn’t that. I ripped the parachute pack on his back with my knife when we got into the plane. But I told him, I did tell him before he jumped. I couldn’t help it. I... but he was gone — on the edge — and he left me there to burn with it — crash with it — for my parachute was useless. He had seen to that.”
“Ssh.” I warned her. “O’Rourke will hear.” Maybe he did hear, and maybe he didn’t. But, anyway, he was running across the fields, running to where the body of Michelle Gorgon had dropped through the trees. I could barely make out the unshapely mass on the ground.
And The Flame talked.
“I had to know about my sister. I had to know if he really planned it so that she was crippled like that. That’s why I went to meet him when he telephoned me. You see, the plane was in my name. Michelle brought it to the airport only a few days ago. He registered it at the field under my name because he was afraid, then, that the truth could come out about Rose Marie. He was afraid — deadly afraid — of that voice on the wire, and was ready for a get-away. He told me everything, once we were in the air. Gloated over the way he had broken my sister. Told me, too, that he had killed her — made her kill herself.
“It was a horrible crime, that murder of my sister. He played upon both her mental and physical weakness. Told her that in the secret flap of her bag was a bottle of poison, and a mirror. And told her that if she were alive in two hours’ time he would bring to see her the man she loved — the man who had loved her.”