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.
The fool had left one of his two valises open under the bunk, ready to haul out his pajamas! Sherman went all through it in no time flat, without messing it too much either. Not in it. It was either in the second one, or he carried it in a hip-holster, but probably the former was the case. Then one of those hunches that at times visit the deserving and the undeserving alike, smote him from nowhere; he tipped the upper end of the mattress back and put his hand on it! A minute later it was broken and the cartridges were spilling out into his palm. He jammed it closed, put it back, and heaved himself back onto his own bunk just as the slap-slap of Fowler’s footsteps started back along the passageway. “Now, buddy!” he thought grimly.
Fowler finished undressing and got under the covers. “Gosh, the air’s stale in here!” he muttered, more to himself than Sherman. “Seems to get ranker by the minute!”
“Whaddya want me to do, hand yuh a bunch of violets?” Babe snarled viciously. He got up and went out, for appearance’s sake, then stayed just outside the door, head bent, listening. Fowler didn’t make a move, at least not to or at the trunk. Sherman took good aim out through the open window that gave onto the little cubicle between their cabin and the next, let fly with the handful of bullets. They cleared the deck beautifully, every last one of them.
He went back in again, saw that Fowler already had his eyes closed, faking it probably. He took off his coat and shoes, put out the light, lay down like he was. The motion of the boat, and the black and orange frieze of the ventilator high up near the ceiling — the corridor lights stayed on all night — were all that remained. And the breathing of two mortal enemies, the stalker and the stalked...
Sherman, who had cursed the ventilator to hell and back after it had nearly betrayed him that time, now suddenly found that it was going to come in handy after all. It let in just enough light, once your eyes got used to the change, so that it wouldn’t be necessary to turn on the cabin light again when the time came to get her out. He couldn’t have risked that under any circumstances, even if it took him half the night to find the keyhole of the trunk with the key. This way it wouldn’t.
The guy was right at that, though, it was getting noticeable in here.
He planned it step by step first, without moving his shoulders from the berth. Get rid of her first and then attend to the dick later was the best way. She couldn’t wait, the dick could. They had six days to go yet, and the dick couldn’t just drop from sight without it backfiring in some way. Down here wasn’t the right spot either. They might run into heavy weather in a day or two, and if he watched his opportunity he might be able to catch the dick alone on the upper deck after the lights went out. Even raise a “Man overboard!” after he went in, if it seemed advisable. Or if not, be the first to report his disappearance the day after.
So now for her. He knew the set-up on these boats. There was always a steward on night duty at the far end of the corridor, to answer any possible calls. He’d have to be gotten out of the way to begin with, sent all the way down to the pantry for something, if possible. Yet he mustn’t rap on the door here in answer to the call and wake up the flatfoot. And he mustn’t come back too quickly and catch Babe out of the cabin — although that was the lesser danger of the two and could always be explained away by the washroom. Now for it; nothing like knowing every step in advance, couldn’t be caught off-base that way.
6
There is an art in being able to tell by a person’s breathing if he is asleep or just pretending to be; it was one of Sherman’s many little accomplishments. But there is another art, too, that goes with it — that of being able to breathe so you fool the person doing the listening. This, possibly, may have been the other man’s accomplishment. His breathing deepened, got scratchier — but very slowly. It got into its stride, and little occasional burblings welled up in it, very artistically. Not snores by any means, just catches in the larynx. Sherman, up on his elbow, thought: “He’s off. He couldn’t breathe that way for very long if he wasn’t — be too much of a strain.”
He got up off the bunk and put on his coat, so the white of his undershirt wouldn’t show. He picked up the shirt that Fowler had ruined and balled it up tightly into fist-size, or not much bigger. He got out the trunk key and put it down on the floor right in front of the trunk, between his bent legs. He spit muffedly into his free hand, soaked the hollow of it. Then he gave that a half-turn up against the lock and each of the clamps. The lock opened quietly enough, but the clamps had a snap to them that the saliva alone wouldn’t take care of. He smothered them under the ganged-up shirt as he pressed each one back. He got it down to a tiny click. Then he took a long, hard look over at Fowler through the gloom. That suction was still working in his throat.
The trunk split apart fairly noiselessly, with just one or two minor squeaks, and he had to turn his head for a minute — for a different reason this time. The way it had opened, though, was all to the good, one side of it shielded him from Fowler’s bunk.
He had to go carefully on the next step, couldn’t just remove her. There were too many loose things in there, all the busted partitions and drawers would clack together and racket. He got them out first, piece by piece. She came last, and wasn’t very heavy.
Now here was where the steward came into it. He had a choice of risks: not to bother with the steward at all, to try sneaking down the passageway in the opposite direction with her. That was out entirely. All the steward would have to do was stick his head out of the little room where the call-board was and spot him. Or, to leave her out, but in here, in the dark, and tackle the steward outside. He didn’t like that one either. Fowler might open his eyes from one moment to the next and let out a yell. So he had to get her out of here, and yet keep the steward from coming near her outside. The inset between the cabins, outside the door, was the answer — but the steward must not turn the corner and come all the way! It was all a question of accurate timing.
He was as far as the cabin door now, but that was a problem in itself. He was holding her up against him like a ventriloquist’s dummy, legs still folded up flat while she hung down straight. He got the door open without any creaking, but a sunburst of orange seemed to explode around him and his burden. It didn’t reach all the way to Fowler’s berth, but it could very well tickle his eyelids open if it was left on too long.
He stepped across the raised threshold with her, holding on to the door so it wouldn’t swing with the ship’s motion. Then without letting go of it he managed to let her down to the floor out there. He turned and went in again alone, to ring for the steward; as he did so an optical illusion nearly floored him for a second. It was that Fowler had suddenly stiffened to immobility in the midst of movement. But he was in the same position that he had been before — or seemed to be — and his lids were down and the clucking was still going on in his throat. There was no time to worry about it, either he was awake or he wasn’t — and he wasn’t, must have just stirred in his sleep.
The steward’s bell, Sherman knew, didn’t make any sound in the cabin itself, only way out at the call-board. He punched it, got back to the door before it had time to swing too far shut or open, and then eased it closed. She was right beside him on the floor out there, but he didn’t look at her, listened carefully. In a minute he heard the put-put of shoeleather coming down from the other end of the passageway. Now!
He drifted negligently around the corner, started up toward the steward to head him off; the man was still two of those lateral insets away. They came together between his, Babe’s and the next.