The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
So Wei Lum played his squeaky little tunes in Half Moon Street and Paradise Court and Mandarin Lane, in Pagoda Street and Peking Court and Long Sword Alley — and when he had finished he would search the night hush with ears alert for the faintest reply from the captive Choy.
Then one night Wei Lum came racing breathlessly into the precinct station, crying out for instant speech with the Red-Hair Sah-jin.
“I find stolen Choy!” he panted to O’Hara. “Tonight, when I make my music in Lantern Court, I hear him call out. Sah-jin, the Feather Devil is a prisoner in No. 14 — in the house of Chang Pao!”
“Chang Pao!” O’Hara exclaimed. “You must be crazy!”
O’Hara’s astonishment was twofold. In the first place, Chang Pao was quite wealthy — Chinatown’s most famous silversmith until he had been forced into retirement by a paralytic stroke which had left him with a crippled hand.
And to make Wei Lum’s accusation even more fantastic, Chang Pao was at that very moment on his deathbed, speechless and completely paralyzed. O’Hara had the word of Doc Stanage, the precinct medico, for that.
“Chang Pao’s had another stroke,” Stanage had reported. “I stopped in to see him, but there’s nothing I can do. It’s just a question of time. He may linger this way for weeks, but the end is certain.”
O’Hara placed these indisputable facts before Wei Lum, but the yellow man held stubbornly to his assertion that the stolen parrot was hidden away in No. 14 Lantern Court.
“Sah-jin, if there were a thousand Feather Devils in dark room, I will pick out the voice of Choy without fail!”
And Wei Lum’s words rang with so much confidence that O’Hara was impressed. After all, there were two other persons in Chang Pao’s house. There was his nephew, Chang Loo, who had been summoned from a distant city when the old silversmith’s condition became worse — and there was his servant, Tai Gat, the limping mafoo.
But Tai Gat the mafoo was something of a Chinatown hero, noted for his unswerving devotion to his master. And as for young Chang Loo, a stranger to the quarter, was it conceivable that he would go about stealing worthless parrots on the very eve of inheriting a great fortune?
Nevertheless, Sergeant O’Hara reached for his hat. “O.K., Wei Lum, we’ll go around to Chang’s for a look-see.”
In the darkness of Lantern Court, the silversmith’s house at No. 14 had the frowning air of a fortress. Lights shining behind the drawn shades of the upper floor revealed the tracery of iron bars, while all the windows of the ground floor were covered by solid wooden shutters, for Chang Pao had developed a fear of thieves that amounted to a phobia.
O’Hara’s brisk rapping was answered promptly by a grim-faced mafoo wearing a shaam of dark blue denim.
“Hola, Tai Gat,” O’Hara greeted.
“Ala wah, Sah-jin,” the mafoo replied, bowing gravely. He walked with a heavy limp, memento of his courageous battle against two armed thugs who had invaded his master’s house some years before.
“Sah-jin, you come for see Master Chang?” Tai Gat inquired.
“Yes,” O’Hara answered, “but first there’s another little matter. Tai Gat, do you have a parrot here in the house?”
“Yiss,” the mafoo replied, without the least trace of hesitation or surprise at the question. “Master keep Feather Devil long time.”
“Well, I’d like to have a look at it,” O’Hara said crisply. “This man — Wei Lum — is searching for a parrot that was stolen.”
“Stolen!” Tai Gat cast a disdainful glance at Wei Lum. “Tsai! Is this a house of thieves? Wei Lum is gila — crazy!”
“You lie, mafoo!” Wei Lum retorted angrily, roused by the measured scorn in Tai Gat’s voice and bearing. “The Feather Devil we seek is here — here in this very house! With my own ears I have heard it.”
“Pipe down, Wei Lum!” O’Hara commanded. “Tai Gat’s offered to show us the honorable Chang Pao’s parrot.”
“Words of wisdom, Sah-jin,” Tai Gat declared. “One glance of the eye tells more than an hour’s talk.”
Chapter Two
The Poh-Liss Take Over
O’Hara looked about him with interest as he followed the limping mafoo toward the stairs, for the house of Chang Pao was a corner of the Orient magically set down in the very heart of the White Devil’s city, and he had not been inside No. 14 Lantern Court since the night, several years before, when Chang Pao’s shrill voice had screamed, “Robbers! Robbers!” from an upper window.
Smashing his way in at the front door, O’Hara had found Tai Gat waging a desperate battle against two night robbers, and holding his own against them despite a badly hurt leg from a headlong tumble down the stairs, an injury which had left the faithful mafoo with his heavy-footed limp.
But the attempted robbery had left its mark on Chang Pao as well. Grown secretive and suspicious, the silversmith lived in a hermit-like seclusion, fortifying his house with barred and shuttered windows, lining his doors with sheet-iron strips, so that they swung open as slowly and ponderously as the gates of a prison.
Tai Gat’s slippered feet were noiseless on the stairs, but O’Hara chanced to stumble, and at the sound a door opened suddenly above, and a young Chinese in a gaudy house-robe of yellow silk moved quickly to the upper railing.
“Hai! What name you? What you want?” he demanded, peering down at them with sharp-eyed suspicion.
O’Hara knew this must be Chang Loo, nephew and heir to the dying silversmith. But before he could reply, Tai Gat’s voice cut in swiftly, naming the visitors.
“Poh-liss!” young Chang hissed, plainly startled. He straightened up stiffly, his right hand creeping into the folds of his yellow sleeve.
Tai Gat’s voice went on in explanation. A Feather Devil had been stolen, and the Red-Hair Sah-jin merely wished to make a look-see at the Master’s parrot.
The mafoo’s words seemed to banish young Chang’s momentary tenseness, although the sharp arrogance remained in his voice.
“Feather Devils!” he echoed haughtily. “Shall we be plagued with such trifling matters in the hour when my venerable uncle stands on the threshold of the Shadow-world? Poh-liss — tsai!” Young Chang spat over his shoulder and made a quick sign with his fingers. “Bid them begone till a more seemly hour!”
O’Hara’s jaw settled into square lines, not liking the arrogant tone of this silk-robed upstart who made the “finger curse” as he mentioned the name of police.
“That trifling matter, Chang, happens to be a murder — Yun Chee’s murder. I want to see that parrot — and right now!”
For a few moments their glances met and held in a tug-of-war — O’Hara’s eyes of frosty blue, Chang Loo’s shoe-button eyes of cold jet, with reddened lids that checked with the sour smell of rice-wine about him.
Then Chang Loo stood aside, sullen and silent, but as the mafoo brushed past he seized hold of his robe and pushed him against the wall. “Brainless fool!” he snarled. “Must you open the door to all who knock?”
So saying, he turned on his heel and stalked back into his uncle’s chamber, while Tai Gat led them to a small room on the top floor — a room hung with plum-colored draperies and fitted out as a prayer shrine. There was an altar with jade bowls and the Chang ancestral tablets, and a gilded wooden statue of Kwan-Yin, but O’Hara had eyes only for the green-feathered parrot perched on a shining steel hoop.