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.
“It’s clear enough,” the sheriff agreed. “But it’s highly speculative. Why isn’t Cal Bradley here with us tonight? It appears he holds the key.”
“He’s absent through no choice of his own,” McGavock retorted. “He’s shuffled off this mortal coil. He’s in the cellar of the Bradley House — stiffer than a briar root—”
There was a gasping silence. Laurel Bennett murmured: “We’re doomed — all of us! There’s an unholy hand at work among us. What have we done to merit such a fate?” She flung out her arms, crossed her hands piously over her heart.
McGavock barked angrily: “Won’t you shut up! This is no time to mug for a spotlight.” The storm outside dropped with a cleaver-like slash, there was only the low whine of the wind.
The girl cried dramatically: “Why isn’t Hal here? Have they slain him, too?”
An oily voice from the doorway said: “Not me, Mrs. Bennett. Hal Maldron can take care of himself.” The attorney barged his gelatinous body into the center of the assembly. “Sorry, Malcom, to pop in this way. Guess you didn’t hear me ring. Got your message, Sheriff. Hustled right over. I was home peeling a bunion off my — But you folks aren’t interested in that.”
“You’re all bunion, if you ask me,” McGavock observed. “Quiet, please. Where was I? Oh, yes. Now let me tell you about Fern Springs. In its heyday it was a fashionable resort, no doubt very popular. It was more than that — it was a murder nest. I don’t mean that the management was involved. I mean that somebody saw certain possibilities and summer after summer turned them to his bloody advantage. Jarrell, I’d like to ask you this question: who carted the guests to and from the railroad junction?”
The naturalist considered. “As I remember it we had a station wagon but we rarely used it. Usually the incumbent guests would take the out-of-county people to the railroad in their personal carriages. We were all one big family.”
“Among you regulars,” McGavock said, “there was a man who plied a terrible trade. He struck up friendships with wealthy guests. In weeks of intimacy he learned about his victims’ contacts, learned who could be disposed of safely. Lonely men and women came to Fern Springs. Many of them would have no one to miss them. When their stay was up, he wheeled his buggy from the stables, gallantly offered to drive them to the junction.” He paused.
“That, of course, was their last ride. He murdered them around the first bend — for their travel money. Men, women and children.”
“It doesn’t seem practical,” Maldron argued. “Murder for a pittance.”
“Pittance, says you. Wealthy vacationists went well-heeled in those days. I’ll wager he cleared two thousand in a season.”
“But Wainwright—” the sheriff put in.
“He broke his routine for Wainwright. And well he might! It netted him a fortune. He slew Wainwright the night he registered. He was afraid to wait, afraid that the absconder might slip from his clutches. Wainwright was his blunder. That’s how I found out who he was.”
“I knew who he was all along,” Malcom Jarrell chirped up. “I saw him drag Hodges’ corpse into my yard.”
“You keep out of this,” McGavock said. “When we need your comment, we’ll ask for it. To continue the story. Hodges, working for Bradley, snooped around until he got himself eliminated. I appeared on the scene. Somehow, probably through Bradley’s loose gossip, the killer learned a city detective was after him. He lay in wait for me at Hodges’ shanty and threw a handful of number four shot at me, sent me a warning note at the Bradley house. I didn’t scare. The next day he changed his tactics. He sent a hillboy named Buck around to Bennett’s — when I was present — to say that Fern Springs had burned at dawn and then hightailed out to fire the building. Actually, there was no evidence in the old building, it had been long since removed, but he had heard about newfangled methods of detection and didn’t know but what maybe a fluoroscope or something would turn up evidence.”
“By the way,” the sheriff remarked. “I’ve got Buck in the hoosegow. So far he won’t talk—”
“He doesn’t need to. He talked a little to me — and that is enough. Well, our killer by now is as busy as a squirrel in a hickory tree. He fires the old building, hunts out some rattlesnakes — those rocky ledges must teem with the vipers — zips back to town. He lures Bradley into the cellar, bashes in his head and sets a firetrap. He leaves the snake heads in my room with a final threatening note, scampers over here to Jarrell’s and stashes the snake bodies in Malcom’s bread box. He’s really putting out steam — he’s fighting for his life.”
Maldron cleared his throat heavily. “It all comes back to me now... How well do I recall that summer in nineteen nine. Every insignificant detail stands out crystal clear. Gil Bennett flouncing around among the ladies, taking them hither and yon in his yellow-spoked trap and livery stable mare. Gil was shabby in those days—”
Jarrell said: “Hal, the time comes when I must speak the truth. You’re my choice.”
Bennett spoke quietly. “And you, Malcom, are mine.”
The sheriff narrowed his eyes. McGavock looked cynical, happy.
“The thing that gives it away,” Bennett explained, “is the rattlesnake theme. You’d know where to go to catch them and how to do it. You couldn’t get Hal Maldron within ten yards of one. But there’s much more to it than that. You were manager at the time of Wainwright’s disappearance. You were no doubt right there at the desk when Cal Bradley signed him in. He looked prosperous, talked with a northern accent, and acted suspicious. You waited a bit, called him to your room and murdered him. Mr. McGavock says that Hodges used a rat in his prowling. Everyone in this town knows that you kept that rat for Hodges. I charge that Hodges was employed by you, that you murdered him on your own lawn and called in this city detective.”
“Such a rigmarole!” Jarrell’s massive head peered about the room. “I’ve no time to indulge in tomfoolery. Clear out, all of you, with your absurdities—”
McGavock said plaintively: “What about me? Doesn’t anybody wish to hear my accusation?”
They stared at him.
“Maldron’s correct. Gil Bennett’s our man!”
“That’s a serious charge,” Steve Robley said gravely. “Is it official?”
“Of course I mean it to be official. He’s a gory killer if you ever saw one.”
Gil said whimsically: “Old pal, you’ve turned on me. And I bet you’ve built up a good case, too.”
“Listen to it,” McGavock whipped out. “And form your own opinion. It was you — old pal — and no one else, who planned and executed this entire massacre. You promoted your murder market at Fern Springs back in nineteen nine and buried your cadavers in the brookbed. You killed Wainwright, took his satchel to your room, looted it and hid it beneath the flooring. Cal Bradley suspected this. He employed the crackpot Hodges to ferret out the evidence. You killed Hodges — it would be simple for a man in the garage business to obtain a magnetized hammer—”
“But you gave me your compass to protect myself against this slayer—”
“You are a sly customer. I was fighting deceit with deceit. As I was saying, you killed Hodges and when I appeared on the scene attacked me. This morning when I visited you at the cotton gin, you saw me coming, grabbed a phone, called the Shamrock poolroom and asked for Buck. You disguised your voice to throw suspicion on your wife. Buck appeared, put across his little act and departed.”
McGavock shook his head. “You made a mistake there, my friend. You may not pay a man for a thirty-mile trip on muleback but you at least thank him. It was a slip — I smelled a rat.”