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.
Ten members of the Klan who were on the Grand Jury up and resigned from the Klan; they come out flat and told the judge how they felt and how they had joined the organization just like they would have joined any other fraternal organization. The end of it was that the judge discharged me without my ever showing up in court.
You see, it was better for me not to be seen about too much. The Klan was slipping and members were leaving it every day; and what’s more, an Anti-Klan organization was forming, though Buck Jabine would have nothing to do with either one of them. Altogether things were bad in Clinton; both factions went around armed and defiant. The Klan had sure lost its grip.
But of Feather-Face nothing was heard; both sides sought him now, equally bent on vengeance. I could see that Feather-Face’s position was not an enviable one — still, he kept clear of Clinton.
“There weren’t no harm in the old order,” Jabine opened up to me one evening. “My father was in the Klan back in the Sixties. But this modern Ku Klux Klan was a money-making graft bent on raising religious and racial hatred. Of course half the crime laid to their doors wasn’t true, but it gave others the opportunity to masquerade under their name. You can’t defy law and order and the rights of your fellow-man without the criminal element sneaking in. Robbery, murder, private vengeance — that’s all what could come of it. And it took you — you, a stranger, to show it all up in its proper light.”
And from then until the day I left that was all Buck Jabine had to say on the subject.
The night that the Thompsons, father and son, came to the house in their little car to drive me to the station, Buck said:
“I have arranged for the train to stop at Haddon Junction, five miles down. You see” — he turned to Old Thompson — “the folks of Clinton were planning to give Race Williams, here, a little sendoff and it won’t do. The Klan spirit is dead. Why bring it up again? There are enough left to make trouble if any popular demonstration is shown. The Klan is slipping — slipping fast and I say let it slip.”
Well, I was agreeable, though I think Willie Thompson — who had become somewhat of a hero about town — was disappointed and felt badly about it. But the cash transaction was all that interested me. I had mailed the check which Thompson had given me along to my New York bank and... well... I didn’t have no doubts on it — but I’d be glad to get home and do a little drawing on it.
So I shook hands with Buck and got a few grunts out of the Jabine boys. Then I said good-bye to the ladies — I didn’t mention the ladies before, but it will be enough to say that they were sure some Amazons and would make a good showing in a free-for-all. And... well... I was off. Old Thompson and me in the front seat and Willie Thompson in the rear. It sure felt good to be on the go again with my twin gats parked nicely about me.
At nine-thirty we was only about a quarter of a mile from the station and ten minutes to catch the train, when we have trouble. Blooey! Both the rear tires go like a couple of cannon; so sudden did it come that I had half drawn my gun.
Then I watched the two of them stall around a minute. I could see the one light of the little station shining in the distance, so I decided to hoof it. These lads treated an automobile like a steamroller — only one spare tire and an inner tube on hand. They’d be a half-hour at least; what with scratching their heads and pulling up their pants.
I wouldn’t listen to their protests about waiting over another night and I wouldn’t let one of them come along to the station with me; they weren’t fit to be separated — too slow-thinking birds they were. No, sir, I was booked for the city and going through.
So I swung out my suitcase and after a couple of handshakes started down the road. I hoofed it fast, but I got a-thinking while I walked; got a-thinking as I looked down and kicked some mighty dirty-looking pieces of glass and half a broken bottle from the road.
I could hear the train coming along and see her headlight flashing down the tracks as I reached the station. Now, there was no station master at this Haddon Junction and only one light on the north side of the station — the side the train was approaching from. So, bag in hand, I started to pass under that light and out onto the platform — then I stopped dead — that broken bottle had suddenly loomed up before me as big as life. I just ducked back and made my way cautiously around the other side of the station. Not really suspicious, you understand — only careful. And that’s the secret of why I hope to die in bed.
Bang! Like that! I duck into a chap who is coming slowly from around the south end of the station. We hit with a crash and both step back a pace; he out on the platform toward the tracks.
Was he quick? Well, he never had no chance. Mind you, he had his gun in his hand, but he never used it. Just as clean as a whistle I had pulled and shot him straight between his bloodshot eyes. The train roared into the station as he fell and in the light of the headlight as it flashed by I got a look at his face. Oh, I knew it before, even in the dull light of the moon. Yep, you hit it — it was Feather-Face. You recollect I once told him that he’d be half a second too late.
And then the brakeman swung out on the step; I climbed aboard; he swung his lantern and we were off.
“Thought I heard a shot,” the brakeman said as he climbed up the steps behind me, where I struggled with the door.
You see, I couldn’t tell what he had seen and I wanted to hear if he had any comments to make. I had half an idea that I had already done enough shooting to please the people of Clinton.
“Yep.”
I turn and look the man over as the train gains headway.
“Yep, a dog snapped at me — a dirty dog — I killed him — with this.”
With that I shoved my gun out under his chin sudden as I watched to see how he took it.
“Thought I saw a figure — a human figure.”
He lays down his lantern and stretches his hand up toward the emergency strap.
Then in the dim light from his lantern I catch the glimpse of a tiny button beneath his coat — yep, his lapel is half twisted around and I take a chance that the letters on that button are KOTOP.
Looking him straight in the eyes, I suddenly raise my right hand and place it over my right eye, palm in — then I reverse the hand, giving him the Klan salute.
His hand lingers for a moment on the bell, but I see that his fingers loosen their grip.
“AYAK,” he says.
“AKIA,” I answer.
His hand drops from the bell and without another word he turns and enters the forward car. I stand so a moment; then with a grin I slip into the rear car. After all that is said against the Klan, I sure got to admit that there are times when it serves its purpose.
Waiting for Rusty
William Cole
William Cole (1912–1992) was born in Manhattan and graduated from Lehigh University. A freelance writer, he lived in New York City for the last sixty years of his life. In addition to short stories, he contributed factual articles on health, family relations, and other social issues to Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, and The Ladies’ Home Journal. He also wrote reports for the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies, as well as scripts for documentary films for the United States Information Service.
The short-short “Waiting for Rusty” was his only contribution to Black Mask. Although very brief, it elicited more reader response than almost any story ever to appear in the magazine. It was published in the October 1939 issue.