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.
McGavock had the impression at the time that he was being decoyed away from something, that the naturalist had been interrupted in something he wished to conceal.
It was pretty obvious that his client had been lying to him like a trooper ever since they had joined forces. According to Jarrell’s story he hadn’t left the back porch for sixteen hours, except to phone Memphis. The cubeb cigarettes and the half-eaten chocolate bar were evidence to the contrary. One doesn’t keep a reserve of such tedium-breaking luxuries on one’s back porch to be conveniently handy for just such an emergency. There had been other funny stuff, too. The naturalist’s report had been as full of holes as a second-hand snood. He’d said he’d been awakened by a dragging sound outside his window — yet the corpse by the arbor was a good thirty yards from the house.
McGavock reconstructed it this way: Jarrell had probably seen the killer drag the body into his yard. Maybe he had recognized him, maybe not. In any event, the naturalist was reluctant to discuss it. It didn’t look good.
The detective scowled. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to plow through a client to get at the criminal.
Luther McGavock swung open the squeaky gate, made a quick, cautious survey of the shrubbery. The white moon high overhead, now harsh and bright, struck the frothy lilac hedge to shimmering silver, laid ragged shadows of black velvet on the close-clipped lawn. It was indescribably beautiful — unearthly. McGavock thought, It’s no wonder the big-headed naturalist is half cuckoo. I’ve never seen a place like this. It’s actually narcotic. A human couldn’t live in this dream world and retain his sense of values. It’s a place for vampires and ghouls, creatures who flourish from the grave.
Lester Hodges had been taken to the funeral home, the mulch had been restacked in the stable lot. Only a few wisps of scattered straw by the arbor testified to the gruesome tragedy.
He inspected the rat in its cage on the porch. Its ruby eyes glared at the hooded flashlight in the detective’s hand. “If you could talk,” McGavock said thoughtfully, “we’d get this thing over in three minutes. You’re the kingpin in this bloody mess.” He fumbled about, discovered the key behind a flowerpot and entered Malcom Jarrell’s kitchen.
He worked through the kitchen, the dining-room, the bedrooms. It took him twenty minutes to discover it: the hiding place in Malcom Jarrell’s study. The detective lifted a Spanish tile in the hearth. Beneath it, in a narrow, boxlike space, lay a bulky brown envelope.
McGavock picked up a small hooked throw-rug from the floor, draped it over a student lamp on the desk, flicked on the light and examined his find.
The envelope contained a thick bundle of clippings, letters and papers held together by a rubber band. It contained something else, too — a little fuzzy, gray ball of hair about as big as a small marble. The detective’s first unpleasant reaction was that he was looking at a wad of human hair, the hair of Lester Hodges.
But this hair was too fine, too dry.
Rat hair? Hardly likely. The fibers were much too long.
McGavock grinned. He realized what he held in his fingers, knew that this was evidence to hang a killer.
He wondered if Jarrell fully realized its significance. Probably yes. It all fitted in now. His call that evening on his client. Jarrell here in this cozy study, interrupted in his analysis of the furry object. It explained the Bebe binoculars and Jarrell’s sidetracking him around the house.
McGavock slipped off the rubber band, fanned out the papers on the desktop and started through them systematically.
The first item was a yellowed newspaper clipping with a block headline. From the Bartonville Clarion, dated August 7, 1909:
A prosperously dressed individual giving his name as T. James Cortwright had, according to the article, registered at the Fern Springs resort on the night of the sixth. In a brief talk with Calhoun Bradley, the clerk, he had declared that he was from Cleveland, Ohio, and had inquired courteously if any of his fellow townsmen were, by chance, among the resort’s guests. With regret Mr. Bradley informed him that the resort was patronized in the main by local gentry and expressed mild astonishment that even Mr. Cortwright had himself heard of its existence in such an out-of-the-way corner of the country. This remark had somehow angered the Clevelander. He had opened a wallet, paid for a month in advance, and had retired to his room.
Mr. Bradley had attempted to mollify him by informing him that the resort’s season was at its height and that later in the evening there was to be a lawn party. Mr. Cortwright had made some unsociable remark and had left the desk.
The next morning a mountain man, snaking logs, had discovered the gentleman’s hat and wallet a quarter of a mile from the hotel buildings. They lay at the edge of a patch of treacherous quicksand known as Devil’s Elbow.
An examination of Mr. Cortwright’s room showed that his bed had not been slept in. The management was attempting to inform Mr. Cortwright’s family.
McGavock said to himself: “So Bradley was clerk. And the season was in full swing. Ten to one, Jarrell was there — and Maldron, and Bennett.”
The next clipping, dated a week later, said:
Here, the tale took a fantastic twist. Communication with the Cleveland police disclosed the stunning fact that T. James Cortwright was none other than Thompson J. Wainwright, a badly wanted absconding broker who had looted his firm of seventy thousand dollars in cold cash.
It seemed obvious to the Cleveland police and to the Bartonville Clarion that Wainwright had selected Fern Springs as a hideout and suddenly, for some unfathomable reason, had an uprising of conscience which induced him to take his life. What had become of the booty, no one could find out. The conclusion was that he must have spent it.
McGavock shook his head. Such goings-on!
How could a stranger, in the night, locate a patch of quicksand he couldn’t possibly have known to exist? Why hadn’t he taken his hat in with him? And just what kind of a conscience was it that Mr. Cortwright-Wainwright possessed? One that drove him to suicide yet refused to return his plunder to his victims. Horsefeathers!
There were three letters, each bearing a recent postmark and mailed a week apart. Each was addressed to Lester Hodges and each contained a blank sheet of paper clipped with a wire paper clip.
Bennett had said that Lester Hodges was unable to read. Someone had used the envelopes to send him money. Bills. And small bills probably — Lester Hodges changing a large banknote in Bartonville would have caused a sensation.
McGavock bundled the stuff back up, snapped on the rubber band and replaced things as he had found them — under the Spanish tile.
The light in the window of Hal Maldron’s law office had been extinguished. The window-rapping attorney, like his fellow citizens, was home in bed — fighting mosquitoes in his old-fashioned nightgown, trying to get some sleep. McGavock palmed the brass knob and got out his key ring with its assortment of keys. The third one did it. He slipped in, left the door ajar behind him.
He knew just what he was going to do and how he was going to do it.
A wire basket on the lawyer’s desk containing signed but unmailed correspondence gave the detective a specimen of Maldron’s signature. It was bold, fancy, with loops and flourishes. The sort of signature a pompous man assumes cannot be forged.