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.
“Me,” Bennett said. “And I still own it. Or rather Mrs. Bennett does. Why?”
“I’m Asie Tenniman. I’m yore south neighbor back there in the pine country. I shore hate to tell you, suh, but ain’t nobuddy owns that building no more. It was farred down to ashes at daybreak this mornin’. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring the word no sooner. Hit’s eighteen miles by muleback an’—”
“Are you telling me,” Bennett asked, “that our resort has been burned?”
“And I don’t mean maybe. Some mighty mean folks live out there in the timber.” The hillman added carelessly: “My woman claims she heard a boiler let loose jest about the time we seen the red.”
“Shiners?”
The boy wouldn’t commit himself. “I couldn’t hardly say, suh. I’m jest a-telling y’all what I know. Good mornin’, gentlemen.”
And he was gone.
McGavock cut out: “Eighteen miles in and eighteen miles back — on a mule. And not a penny, not even a word of thanks.”
“You don’t understand these people,” Gil Bennett observed quietly. “If I’d offered him money he’d have thrown it in my face. It’s a favor and I’ll remember it. Maybe sometime I’ll have a chance to pay a doctor’s bill or something for him... What do you make of it?”
The detective fanned the air. “It’s too much for me!”
Chapter Four
Seek and Ye Shall Find
There was a telegram waiting for him on his return to the hotel. A pimple-faced kid with a muff of uncut hair skipped it across the register with an insolent flourish. He was wearing an oversize alpaca coat and black-ribboned nose glasses. “And who are you, my scrofulous adolescent?” McGavock inquired.
“I’m swing man to this joint. Mr. Bradley, he’s takened him a day off. He’s got a misery.”
“Mr. Bradley’s ill? You don’t seem overcome with grief.”
“Not me. It ain’t no shingles off my smokehouse.” He paused. “That’s shore a nutty telegram in that there envelope. I chanct to hold ’er up to the light. I can’t make no sense out’n—”
“You got a fine start, son.” McGavock was warm in his encouragement. “Just keep on candling private correspondence and you’ve got a big future before you.”
Behind the locked door of his room, McGavock slit the envelope, extracted the yellow flimsy. The message was signed Atherton Browne. It read:
EIGHT FOUR ONE COMMA TWO TWELVE FIVE COMMA ONE THREE ONE COMMA TWENTY ONE FOUR COMMA SIX ONE SEVEN COMMA ELEVEN NINE THREE YOU’RE NOT ON A VACATION.
McGavock glowered. He went to his Gladstone and got out his copy of Dr. Trimble’s Hygiene for Babies, the Browne Agency keybook. Page eight, line four, word one gave him what. Page two, line twelve, word five was if. Laboriously, the detective leafed back and forth, broke down the code.
The deciphered message read: What if anything are you accomplishing — you’re not on a vacation.
McGavock purpled. He grabbed the book till the veins stood out on his wrist. He drew back his arm to dash the volume against the wall, froze, grinned. He uncapped his fountain pen, settled down and filled out an answer.
It took him twenty minutes to get it the way he wanted it. The final draft said: Page one seventeen, paragraph three, in toto.
Paragraph three on page one hundred seventeen of Dr. Trimble’s Hygiene for Babies said: Keep your nasal passages clean!
He left the wire with the kid at the desk with the injunction that he get it off immediately — and headed for the Bartonville garage. He wanted to rent a car and take a look at what was left of Fern Springs.
Sheriff Steve Robley was lounging beneath the shady marquee of the Magnolia Drugstore. He uncrossed his ankles, picked a short cigarette stub out of an ivory holder, put the holder in a little velvet-lined case. “Luther McGavock!” He saluted the detective. “The Man of Forty Faces.”
McGavock came to a halt, squinted. “What’s the rib, Sheriff?”
Robley gave him a quick, friendly grin. “You’ve really got this town on its ear. They’ve been comparing notes on you. I’ve had a dozen warnings about you. To Cal Bradley you’re representing a mythical celery king named Boggs. Malcom Jarrell thinks he’s your client. You tell Maldron and myself that you’re representing some brokers in Cleveland. The clerk at Jones’ hardware store tells me that you bought a compass from him and that you are not McGavock at all but a man named, singularly, Lester Hodges.” The sheriff’s lips quirked in a boyish smile but the skin about his eyes was tight. “Furthermore and furthermore. That ‘seek the bones’ message on Hal Maldron’s desk blotter is just a little too good to be true. It makes me uneasy. I’ve put a call through to your agency in Memphis to check it but can’t seem to get any satisfactory response. They must have the letter on file — if such a letter exists.”
“Of course they have,” McGavock declared. “That letter’s going to clear up this case.”
“That’s my car yonder by the watering trough.” The sheriff pointed lazily to a low, tan job bright with metalwork. “I was just pondering a trip out to the old resort. I’d like a little company. Think I could shanghai you into going along?”
McGavock frowned. “Don’t pressure me. I got a schedule that’s swamping me.” He considered. “O.K.,” he agreed. “If we can get back before suppertime.”
The drive deep into the hills was rough and tiresome. Just out of town they struck the sloping red clay road and started their winding climb. Through a gap in the foliage, they could glimpse the village. It lay in the dank liquid-green of the bottoms, its buildings like tiny matchboxes. Main Street seemed one long, rambling shed. McGavock made out the red-painted cotton compress, court square and — in the distance — the rickety wooden trestle curving above the cut with its long, spindly supports. The trestle by Hodges’ shanty where his attacker had opened on him with shotgun slugs... Great oaks closed about them and the picture was gone.
The high ridge caught the hot sun’s rays, illuminating the tree shafts with preternatural clearness. The earth was brassy, scorched.
They turned from the pike, followed an indistinct trace of wagon ruts — and then, abruptly, it was cool, gray shadow. They were in the pine country.
Sheriff Robley stopped his car at a fork in the trail. “That’s Devil’s Elbow. Where Wainwright’s hat and wallet were found. Shall we get out?”
McGavock glanced at the sink hole. It was a vile, grassy bog, saucer-shaped, bordered by dense hazel bushes and speckled with the sickly pastel blooms of wild orchids. “There’s nothing here for us,” he remarked. “Wainwright never saw this place.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Steve Robley agreed grudgingly. “It’s the old hotel that holds the clues I’m after.”
“Then you’ll have to sift the ashes,” McGavock gibed. “It’s been torched.”
The sheriff listened attentively while McGavock told him about Asie Tenniman’s report. “So we drove out here for the trip! This is another of your tricks! What’s behind it?”
McGavock said: “I’ve got a hunch. Play along with me — I think we can turn up something interesting.”
The old resort, deep in a bowl of giant pines, was a shambles of flaming timbers. It was as if some giant hand had caught up the burning building, crushed it to splintered wreckage, and had dropped it, jackstraw fashion, to a blazing inferno. They could hear the vicious crackle and snap of the tinder-dry joists long before they turned into the little hollow.