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.
“That’s the spirit,” O’Hara commended. “With the parrot dead, perhaps we’ll never find the rest of your uncle’s money.”
“Yes,” Driscoll agreed. “Parrot or no parrot, you can bet Tai Gat and his pal gave this house a Number One going-over — and no dice.” He went over to the table and stood looking at the heaped-up valuables.
“The way I figure it, Sarge, they got the jitters when the parrot escaped with Chang’s message and started packing up to take it on the lam. Then Tai Gat got the bright idea of bumping off his pal and letting the dead man take the rap.”
“I think it goes even deeper than that,” O’Hara put in. “I believe that this false nephew was only a stooge for Tai Gat’s scheming. I doubt if he knew anything about the parrot, or the hidden treasure.”
“But Chang Pao’s letter!” Driscoll exclaimed. “We found it in his pocket!”
“Yes, but don’t forget the smudge of China ink from Tai Gat’s fingers,” O’Hara replied. “I’ll never be able to prove it now, but I’d bet Tai Gat planted that letter after the murder, to make the job look even more complete. He’d still have the inside track, so long as he had the real Shao under cover.”
O’Hara opened out Chang Pao’s fateful letter, and stood staring at it for a moment. “I’m convinced that Tai Gat engineered this whole job, from start to finish. Very likely he got hold of this letter when Chang Pao had his second stroke, and started the ball rolling by stealing Yun Chee’s parrot as a stand-in for Shao.
“But the parrot wouldn’t talk, and old Chang was obviously on his deathbed, so he cooked up his scheme to install a false heir while he went on searching for the hidden treasure. However, his stooge got out of control — drinking and gambling and quarreling — throwing away the money too fast to suit Tai Gat, so when the parrot got away from Mandarin Lane with the message, he saw a chance to eliminate his partner.
“His first job was to get Shao back in his possession. With that done, he scurried back to Lantern Court, fixed up the phoney parrot with China ink and samshu, and then disposed of his pal — by treachery, no doubt. He put on the yellow robe to fool us, fired a volley, then dashed in here, bolted the door, put the yellow robe back on the dead man, and made his getaway over the roofs. That’s my line on what happened.”
“It sounds O.K. to me, Sarge,” Driscoll agreed. “That joss house alibi will turn out to be as phoney as Tai Gat’s limp... Phew! Smell the samshu, Sarge? I’m splashed all over from that damn jar. If I don’t get these clothes off quick I’ll get a drunk on just smellin’ the stuff.”
O’Hara pointed to the dripping stain on the wall where the blue jar had smashed. “You’re lucky Tai Gat didn’t aim a couple of inches lower, Driscoll, or you’d have been a gone goose... Hey, what’s this?”
O’Hara bent down and picked up a lustrous pink globule from the debris on the floor, and as he held it between thumb and forefinger his eyes lit with excitement.
“A pearl!” he exclaimed. “A big one — a beauty! And look, here’s another one, and another!”
By that time Driscoll and young Chang had joined the hunt, eagerly turning over the jagged fragments of the samshu jar. They found more pearls, many more, some rolling free, others imbedded in a kind of waxy tallow which still clung to the broken jar.
“Pearls! A fortune in pearls!” O’Hara exclaimed, when they had finished their searching and young Chang Loo’s hands held the gleaming heap of lustrous sea-gems. “Old Chang Pao dropped them into this samshu jar, then poured wax over them to seal them to the bottom. It’s his hidden treasure.”
“I’ll say it was hidden!” Driscoll put in. “Why, even if you poured out the liquor and looked inside the jar, you wouldn’t notice anything. Unless you smashed the jar, you’d never find ’em!”
And suddenly the solution to the strange riddle of the old silversmith’s parrot flashed into O’Hara’s mind. He turned excitedly to Chang Loo.
“Listen, Chang, the parrot’s name was Shao, wasn’t it? And Shao is the Chinese word for fire. But the parrot always squawked out its name three times — Shao! Shao! Shao! Get it? The three-word key to your uncle’s hidden treasure wasn’t three different words, as Tai Gat thought, but only one word, repeated three times — fire, fire, fire! Follow your uncle’s directions, make one word of the three, and what do you have? Three times fire — triple fire.”
“Hai!” young Chang exclaimed. “Triple fire — it is the name for samshu!”
“Exactly!” O’Hara said. “Samshu is a powerful liquor, distilled three times. It’s as clear as crystal, once you get on the right track. Perhaps the parrot always squawked its name three times, and that’s what gave your uncle the idea for hiding the pearls in a samshu bottle.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Driscoll exploded. “Think of that! Tai Gat prodding the parrot for its secret, and the bird screaming the answer at him all the time! And maybe the samshu he gave it was poured from this very jar!”
“Yes, it’s strange the way things work out sometimes,” O’Hara said thoughtfully. “You know, Driscoll, sometimes I almost believe those invisible Lords of Destiny the Chinks are always talking about do take a hand in things!”
Let the Dead Alone
Merle Constiner
(Francis) Merle Constiner (1902–1979) was born in Ohio and graduated from Vanderbilt University, then returned to Ohio, where he lived for the rest of his life. He wrote prolifically for the detective pulps, creating several series characters that were somewhat unusual for their venues because they were less hard-boiled than humorous.
Perhaps his best-known series features Wardlow Rock, known as “the Dean,” an eccentric genius in the mold of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe. His “Watson” or “Archie Goodwin” is Benton (Ben) Matthews, who serves as both an assistant as well as the chronicler of the tales. There is even a Mrs. Hudson — like landlady, Mrs. Duffy, who runs the rooming house in which the detectives live. Not surprisingly, just as Inspector Lestrade calls on Holmes for help and Inspector Cramer visits Wolfe, Lieutenant Mallory consults the Dean when a case seems too complex or outré to be solved by the police department. There were nineteen stories published in Dime Detective between 1940 and 1945, collected in book form by editor Robert Weinberg in The Compleat Adventures of the Dean (2004). For Black Mask, he wrote a series of eleven humorous tales about Luther McGavock, a private detective who works for Atherton Browne, who runs a Memphis-based agency; most have rural settings. Constiner’s only mystery novel was Hearse of a Different Color (1952), though he had numerous Western novels and pulp stories published.
“Let the Dead Alone,” the first McGavock tale, was published in the July 1942 issue.
“I don’t know a snowshoe rabbit from a horned owl,” Luther McGavock admitted when asked if he was a hunting man. What he neglected to add was that he knew two-footed killers very well indeed — and had come to murder-ridden Bartonville for the express purpose of potting one on the wing or any other way that seemed handy, using the help of native beaters, if necessary.