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.
“You know a helluva lot for a stranger,” Gorgan exclaimed belligerently, both disturbed and interested. “Maybe — since you’re so smart — you also know the code word?”
Gorgan expected to catch Deen there. He paused triumphantly and his gun rose to a level with Deen’s chest.
“But, of course,” Deen said mildly. “Home of Kaa.”
Wilkins leaped to his feet like a shot. He cried, “Kaa! He knows it, Maxie. He must be straight. Lane would never have trusted him. How else could he have gotten hold of that? Kirk didn’t even know. It was between Lane and you and me. For telegraphic correspondence to assure identification.”
“So Lane told you, eh?” Gorgan mused.
“Yes.”
“You know about the — business, too?”
“You refer to the shipping of the jewels in the pythons—”
“Okay.” Maxie held up his hand. “You know all right.” He turned to Wilkins. “This may be a cross. I don’t see how, but it may be. Better check him.”
Deen smiled. “And how do you ‘check’ me?”
Gorgan regarded him coldly. “Lane told us more than once about a Yankee dick at the Bombay office who was always asking questions. We anticipated the guy might try something. His name is Deen Bradley. Maybe you’re on the level. Maybe you’re not. Wilkins — check those fingerprints he just left on the chair.”
Deen frowned as Wilkins hurried forward and sprinkled a quantity of grayish powder on the spot where his hand had rested.
“You see,” Gorgan said, grinning evilly, “Lane sent me a copy of that Yank dick’s prints from India. We were taking no chances.”
Deen’s lips were a thin, bloodless line. The green cigarette holder stiffened between his teeth. Wilkins opened a file drawer and brought out two photographs. Carefully he compared them with the marks on the arm of the chair.
“The same, Maxie!”
Gorgan sighed, relieved. “I thought so. I thought if I prattled on a little, he’d leave his prints somewhere. So you’re Deen Bradley, the famous Bombay operative, eh?” His voice snapped into a vicious snarl. “Well, you’re on your last case! You’re through. What do you think we are — pulling a raw stunt like this?”
Wilkins was trembling with excitement.
“What are we going to do, Maxie?” he demanded.
Gorgan smiled without humor.
“We’ll take him down into the snake room. We’ll put him in the pit and let him make friends with the big boy. The thirty-foot constrictor. The one we haven’t fed for three weeks. Let’s see how a rat can fight a python. And then we’ll get the Kubij opal from the new shipment and take it on the lam. This business is all washed up, Wilky. We’ve made enough out of it.”
Gorgan rose, his pistol ominously steady in his hand. “Okay, Deen,” he growled. “Keep ahead of me. If you make any funny moves, this lead bites you instead of the snake.”
Deen rose silently, his immobile face void of expression. He left the office, Gorgan’s automatic prodding painfully into his back. They descended the stairs.
The descent took them into the cellar of the house, which, Deen noted, was not damp at all, the floors being amazingly desiccated. Before a huge metal door, the two men stopped him. Wilkins accepted the proffered pistol while Maxie unlocked the door. It swung open. Gorgan snapped on the lights. They entered, leaving the metal door unlocked behind them.
Deen stared in astonishment at the room. It was enormous, the entire breadth of the house above. In the center of the room was a pit, about twenty feet deep. It was lined with opaque glass and was empty. An iron railing surrounded it. Near the railing, on the far side, was a large packing case.
“A pretty showroom, isn’t it?” Gorgan leered. “Watch!”
Deen gazed into the bottom of the pit, fascinated. Gorgan went to the wall and pulled down a short lever. The glass partition on one side began to rise. Instantly there was a sickening slithery scrape. The macabre head of a huge serpent slid out of the compartment in the wall to wind a path across the bottom of the pit, shaking the kinks and curls out of its great length. It was orange-brown and repugnantly thick. It raised its terrible snout, hungrily searching.
“He wants living food,” Gorgan growled alarmingly.
He moved threateningly on Deen while Wilkins still held the pistol in Deen’s back.
With a lightning blow, Deen twisted around and cracked Wilkins on the side of the jaw with fearful strength. The punch clipped the man cleanly, eliciting a resounding crack. Wilkins fell like an ox. The pistol dropped from his nerveless hand as a red welt flamed on his chin.
Deen dived for the gun, conscious of Gorgan behind him.
He felt a ringing blow on his head, as Gorgan slashed down his clenched fists like a lunatic. It stunned him momentarily. He fell dazedly on his side and struggled courageously for the pistol.
Maxie Gorgan reached it first. He lifted it and fired.
The slug ripped through Deen’s coat and buried itself in the opaque glass of the snake pit behind the detective.
Painfully, Deen strove to raise himself, hanging precariously to the iron railing at his back.
Gorgan raised the gun quickly for a second shot.
“Wait!” Deen called breathlessly.
Gorgan hesitated, then relaxed his trigger finger still holding the heavy automatic at Deen’s head. “What do you want? Talk fast!”
Deen nodded dejectedly.
“I admit defeat,” he said in a low voice. “I have failed and therefore deserve to die. But before you kill me, I have one last request to make.”
“What is it?” Gorgan snapped.
“I would like to smoke a last cigarette,” Deen replied. “Surely you can not deny a doomed man that courtesy?”
A crafty look narrowed Gorgan’s eyes as he threw a surreptitious glance at the glass pit and the huge python. He lowered the gun and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Deen rapidly felt in his pockets for his odd greenish cigarette holder. He found it and placed it between his teeth. Then he found a cigarette and started to make a pretense of lighting it.
Simultaneously, Gorgan sprang forward when Deen’s head was slightly turned, and with almost preternatural strength, shoved the detective through the railing, hurling him cruelly into the glass pit.
Deen turned a complete somersault and landed thuddingly on his feet at the bottom. He turned. The regal serpent was not three feet away from him, its elliptical eyes regarding him with sinister austerity.
Meanwhile, Gorgan, certain that the detective was safely in the python pit, turned savagely to John Wilkins who had recovered from Deen’s furious blow and was struggling to regain his feet.
“Your ace is in!” Gorgan snarled at him.
“You’re through, Wilky. This is just the chance I’ve wanted. Lane dead. Kirk dead. The dick with the python. And now — you! There’ll be no split on the jewels. They’re all mine, mine!”
Crackling like a madman, he aimed the deadly Luger.
Wilkins gaped at him in horror and shrilly screamed.
Crack! Crack!
Jagged blue holes appeared in Wilkins’ forehead as red blood poured copiously down his neck where the two bullets ripped his skull to pieces on the way out.
His legs collapsed suddenly, even while his eyes rolled sightlessly at Gorgan’s smoking gun. He fell — right into the glass pit and on top of the python’s back!