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.
Redfern came back to me, his eyes shining, his hands outstretched.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Did you hear that Mrs. Kemper is going to purchase her season’s supply of jewels? It’s a great success. Everyone will follow suit. In fact, we will have to make her a little present, something to remember the occasion by.”
I grabbed his arm.
“Yeah, in the meantime you’d better make out your check for the space. I’m goin’ to get collected up right now so I won’t have any books to keep.”
Without a whimper he pulled out his checkbook.
“Payable to...?” he asked.
“Just make it payable to Ed Jenkins,” I told him. “ ‘The Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit’ was just a trade name.”
He nodded and made out the check, dazed and happy.
A sergeant of police elbowed his way over, but he was smiling.
“Jenkins, you’re all right!” he said. “I’ve had an anonymous tip these last two weeks to get you on suspicion of a big gem robbery, and here you were actually on the square. Bringing back that truckload was a wonderful thing. How did you do it?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Just by bein’ honest, Sergeant, an’ never lettin’ that crook Schwartz get a chance. I was watchin’ him like a hawk. Next time don’t be so anxious to believe evil of me.”
He shook his head as though he were in the middle of a dream and walked away, and, as he walked, I saw him pinch himself to find out whether he was really awake.
Helen Chadwick was over in a corner, away from the crowd, waiting.
“Ed, you won’t be such a stranger, now that you’ve got this thing over with, will you?”
There was a wistful something in her voice, and I suddenly came down to earth, realized that in spite of any brilliant tricks I might play on the police or on other crooks, that I was, after all, a crook, myself. I realized also that no good could come to this girl from knowing me, and I cared so much for her that I wanted to protect her, even from myself.
“I’m going to get that other paper for you, Helen,” I temporized, “and then we’ll have a chance to sit down and talk other things over.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“You’re the most obstinate brute I ever was engaged to,” she said, and instantly became all vivacious chatter, all social small talk.
I grinned at her.
“Do I get any reward for that last paper, young lady?” I asked her.
She gave a quick glance around, then tilted her head, and pursed her lips.
“Come and get it,” she challenged.
Fifteen minutes later, when I had started down the street to get those checks cashed, a dirty urchin thrust a paper in my hand.
“The man said there’d be an answer,” he said, peering up at me with his young-old, wise eyes.
I unfolded the paper.
“You can’t make it stick,” read the note. “Other papers are outstanding and will be used in a way to ruin persons you would protect. Give this lad an answer, stating when and where you will turn over the commissions. I mean to have those space checks. That money is to come to me. Where do I get it and when?”
The note was unsigned. It didn’t need a signature. I had jarred old Icy-Eyes out of his calm. I grinned, took a pencil from my pocket and started to scribble an answer, and then those words of Helen Chadwick’s came to my mind. I chuckled and scribbled my message of defiance on the back of the note.
“COME AND GET IT,” I wrote, and handed the paper back to the boy.
“The answer is on the back,” I told him, and with that I started on my way, knowing that they would try to follow me, knowing also that I must thrust aside the ways of civilized society and vanish within the shadows, knowing that this conflict with the icy-eyed criminal would never cease until one of us had written “In Full of Account” against the life of the other. But in the meantime I had turned the tables, had got the police guessing, and had seen Helen Chadwick again — that joyous little flapper who was such a baffling combination of vivacious frivolity and courageous fortitude, that girl who was commencing to be so much in my thoughts.
Let Icy-Eyes come and get it. He would find a warm reception waiting him.
Cry Silence
Fredric Brown
Fredric Brown (1906–1972) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended the University of Cincinnati and Hanover College before becoming an office worker from 1924 to 1936. He then took a job as a proofreader and reporter for the Milwaukee Journal. A chronic respiratory problem caused him to move to Taos, New Mexico, then Tucson, Arizona. While at the Journal, he sold his first short story and went on to publish more than three hundred stories in his lifetime, as well as nearly thirty novels, in both the science fiction and mystery genres.
Equally revered by fans of science and mystery fiction, Brown was one of the most original, creative pulp writers of his time, his stories often having astonishing twists and surprise endings, frequently leavened with humor. His first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), won an Edgar Allan Poe Award and introduced the detective team of Ed Hunter and his uncle Am, who appeared in six subsequent novels.
Brown wrote scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and several television dramas and films were made from his books, notably Crack-Up (1946, RKO, starring Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, and Herbert Marshall), based on his short story “Madman’s Holiday,” and The Screaming Mimi (1958, Columbia, starring Anita Ekberg, Phil Carey, and Gypsy Rose Lee), based on the novel of the same name.
“Cry Silence” was published in the November 1948 issue.
Would you try to save your wife from a killer? Seems like a simple question, but to Mandy’s husband, it was one to stump the experts.
It was that old silly argument about sound. If a tree falls deep in the forest where there is no ear to hear, is its fall silent? Is there sound where there is no ear to hear it? I’ve heard it argued by college professors and by street sweepers.
This time it was being argued by the agent at the little railroad station and a beefy man in coveralls. It was a warm summer evening at dusk, and the station agent’s window opening onto the back platform of the station was open; his elbows rested on the ledge of it. The beefy man leaned against the red brick of the building. The argument between them went in circles like a droning bumblebee.
I sat on a wooden bench on the platform about ten feet away. I was a stranger in town, waiting for a train that was late. There was one other man present; he sat on the bench beside me, between me and the window. He was a tall, heavy man with a face like granite, an uncompromising kind of face, and huge, rough hands. He looked like a farmer in his town clothes.
I wasn’t interested in either the argument or the man beside me. I was wondering only how late that damned train would be.
I didn’t have my watch; it was being repaired in the city. And from where I sat I couldn’t see the clock inside the station. The tall man beside me was wearing a wristwatch and I asked him what time it was.
He didn’t answer.
You’ve got the picture, haven’t you? Four of us; three on the platform and the agent, leaning out of the window. The argument between the agent and the beefy man. On the bench, the silent man and I.
I got up off the bench and looked into the open door of the station. It was seven forty; the train was twelve minutes overdue. I sighed, and lighted a cigarette. I decided to stick my nose into the argument. It wasn’t any of my business, but I knew the answer and they didn’t.