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.
“There is proof. I have the signed statement in my pocket. Doctor Drake will talk. Harry Atmore will confess... There she goes. Stop her!”
The cat-woman had seen that her play was ended. She had realized that she was at the end of her rope, that I held the evidence in my possession, that the bound and gagged girl upstairs would testify against her. She had dashed from the room while the stupefied police had held me and stared at her with goggle eyes.
Openmouthed they watched her flight, no one making any attempt to take after her, eight or ten holding me in their clumsy hands while the cat-woman, the arch criminal of them all, dashed out into the night.
H. F. Morton looked at me and smiled.
“Police efficiency, Jenkins,” he said.
Then he faced the officers. “Turn him loose.”
The officers shifted uneasily. The man in charge drew himself up stiffly and saluted. “He is a noted criminal with a price on his head, the very devil of a crook, sor.”
Morton drummed steadily on the desk.
“What charge have you against him?”
The officer grunted.
“Stealin’ Mr. Holton’s necklace, an’ breakin’ into his house, sor.”
“Those charges are withdrawn,” came from the rear of the room in deep, firm tones.
I turned to see Arthur C. Holton. He had dressed and joined the group. I did not even know when he had entered the room, how much he had heard. By his side, her eyes starry, stood Jean Ellery, and there were gleaming gems of moisture on her cheeks.
The policeman grunted.
“For kidnappin’ the young lady an’ holdin’ her. If she stayed against her will ’twas abductin’, an’ she wouldn’t have stayed with a crook of her own accord, not without communicatin’ with her folks.”
That was a poser. I could hear Jean suck in her breath to speak the words that would have freed me but would have damned her in society forever; but she had not the chance.
Before I could even beat her to it, before my confession would have spared her name and sent me to the penitentiary, H. F. Morton’s shrewd mind had grasped all the angles of the situation, and he beat us all to it.
“You are wrong. The girl was not kidnapped. Jenkins never saw her before.”
The policeman grinned broadly.
“Then would yez mind tellin’ me where she was while all this hue an’ cry was bein’ raised, while everyone was searchin’ for her?”
Morton smiled politely, urbanely.
“Not at all, officer. She was at my house, as the guest of my wife. Feeling that her interests were being jeopardized and that her life was in danger, I had her stay incognito in my own home.”
There was tense, thick silence.
The girl gasped. The clock ticked. There was the thick, heavy breathing of the big-bodied policemen.
“Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rumiddy, tumptidy, tumpy tum-tum,” drummed the lawyer. “Officer, turn that man loose. Take off those handcuffs. Take... off... those... handcuffs... I... say. You haven’t a thing against him in California.”
As one in a daze, the officer fitted his key to the handcuffs, the police fell back, and I stood a free man.
“Good night,” said the lawyer pointedly, his steely eyes glittering into those of the officers.
Shamefacedly, the officers trooped from the room.
Jean threw herself into my arms.
“Ed, you came back because of me! You risked your life to save mine, to see that a wrong was righted, to see that I was restored to my father! Ed, dear, you are a man in a million.”
I patted her shoulder.
“You were a good pal, Jean, and I saw you through,” I said. “Now you must forget about it. The daughter of a prominent millionaire has no business knowing a crook.”
Arthur Holton advanced, hand outstretched.
“I was hypnotized, fooled, taken in by an adventuress and worse. I can hardly think clearly, the events of the past few minutes have been so swift, but this much I do know. I can never repay you for what you have done, Ed Jenkins. I will see that your name is cleared of every charge against you in every state, that you are a free man, that you are restored to citizenship, and that you have the right to live,” and here he glanced at Jean: “You will stay with us as my guest?”
I shook my head. It was all right for them to feel grateful, to get a bit sloppy now that the grandstand play had been made, but they’d probably feel different about it by morning.
“I think I’ll be on my way,” I said, and started for the door.
“Ed!” It was the girl’s cry, a cry which was as sharp, as stabbing as a quick pain at the heart. “Ed, you’re not leaving!”
By way of answer I stumbled forward. Hell, was it possible that the difficulty with that threshold was that there was a mist in my eyes? Was Ed Jenkins, the phantom crook, known and feared by the police of a dozen states, becoming an old woman?
Two soft arms flashed about my neck, a swift kiss planted itself on my cheek, warm lips whispered in my ear.
I shook myself free, and stumbled out into the darkness. She was nothing but a kid, the daughter of a millionaire oil magnate. I was a crook. Nothing but hurt to her could come to any further acquaintance. It had gone too far already.
I jumped to one side, doubled around the house, away from the street lights, hugging the shadow which lay near the wall. From within the room, through the half-open window there came a steady, throbbing, thrumming sound: “Rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tum; rummy-tum-tummy; tum-tummy-tum-tum.”
H. F. Morton was thinking.
The Dilemma of the Dead Lady
Cornell Woolrich
The master of noir fiction, Cornell Woolrich (1903–1968) wrote literally hundreds of stories, of which fewer than you might think have happy endings.
It was difficult to find the right story for this section because so many of his characters are shades of gray. People with whom we empathize choose to murder someone, or are put in positions where there seems to be no choice. Policemen, the upholders of the law, are frequently fascistic thugs who enjoy torturing suspects. Pretty girls with faces of angels turn out to be liars and cheats, and often worse. His situations ended unjustly when other authors would have resolved them neatly, and a Woolrich character often still faces a future barren of love, joy, or hope at the end of a story.
“The Dilemma of the Dead Lady” has had a varied life. Inspired by a cruise he took with his mother in 1931, he twists the memories into one of his most horrifying suspense stories. Although it was common for Woolrich to visit great terrors on ordinary, decent people, in this tale the central character is such a lowlife that we almost feel he deserves whatever befalls him.
After its original publication in the July 4, 1936, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly, it was retitled “Wardrobe Trunk” for its book publication in The Blue Ribbon (1946) by William Irish, Woolrich’s pseudonym. Oddly, Woolrich rewrote it as a radio play titled “Working Is for Fools,” which was never produced but did appear in the March 1964 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
1
It was already getting light out, but the peculiar milky-white Paris street lights were still on outside Babe Sherman’s hotel window. He had the room light on, too, such as it was, and was busy packing at a mile-a-minute rate. The boat ticket was in the envelope on the bureau. All the bureau drawers were hanging out, and his big wardrobe trunk was yawning wide open in the middle of the room. He kept moving back and forth between it and the bureau with a sort of catlike tread, transferring things.