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.
Ferraro’s mouth muscles twitched. He started to say something quickly, but caught himself. Turning, he made a movement as though to toss the pin towards the table. The ship was rolling heavily: he was forced to brace himself. Jo Gar leaned against the door. Ferraro said, facing him, a smile on his face:
“Wait — this is the piece of junk you found, Señor Gar.”
There was a half-careless tone to his voice, yet he spoke hurriedly. Jo Gar looked at the bar pin in his hand.
“Of course,” he agreed. “I am sorry.”
They exchanged pins, both smiling. Jo slipped his into a pocket. He said:
“I’m going to nap — it’s getting steadily rougher. Sleeping helps.”
Ferraro tossed the pin towards the table. It struck it, but rolled from the surface to the floor. The one in white made an instinctive motion towards it, checked himself. He yawned, faced Jo.
“I’ll have a try at it,” he said.
Jo smiled and went outside. It took him five minutes to get to the captain’s quarters. In another ten minutes the cabin boy had been sent to Ferraro’s cabin. The Third Officer and Jo Gar, five minutes later, watched the one with the pale face following the cabin boy towards the captain’s quarters. He did not see them. They went swiftly to his cabin, and the Third Officer used the key. Inside, Jo Gar looked on the floor. The bar pin was not there. It lay on the small table, on its back, the cheap stones face downward.
Jo Gar picked it up and handed it to the Third Officer. They went silently from the cabin, locking the door behind them. The Cheyo Maru was rolling heavily.
The Third Officer said: “Getting a little rough, Señor.”
The Island detective nodded. “I trust so,” he said softly.
Fallibar, a diamond expert returning to the States, seated across from Jo Gar and Captain Haroysan, spoke quietly:
“The third stone is a fine diamond,” he said. “The others in the pin are just glass. Even this real one has been painted, to give it false glitter. Painted on the back. And crudely mounted. But then, all of them are just stuck in holes of the metal.”
There was silence. Fallibar studied the slip of paper Jo had given him. He nodded his head.
“It answers the description,” he said slowly. “It’s one of the Von Loffler stones. I’ve handled diamonds for thirty years, and I’d swear to that.”
Jo Gar sighed. “And it was lost, while Señor Ferraro’s cabin was being ransacked,” he said slowly.
The Third Officer said in a hard voice:
“Two of us have gone through everything he has in there. The purser is still detaining him, telling him there is a mistake in his passage papers. But we’re through — we have found nothing.”
Captain Haroysan regarded Jo with narrowed, dark eyes.
“Señor Gar has traced this one diamond,” he said. “I think it should be his affair.”
Jo smiled. “That is good of you,” he said. “I can think of only one way.”
The captain of the Cheyo Maru said quietly:
“You will need assistance?”
The Island detective smiled with his thin lips pressed together. He ran brown fingers across the skin of his forehead, then shook his head.
“I do not think so,” he said very softly. “It is difficult to tell.”
Fallibar said grimly: “There has been a murder, and your life has been attempted—”
Jo Gar smiled at the diamond expert who was returning to the States. The Cheyo Maru rolled sluggishly in the seas kicked up by the tail end of the typhoon.
“I shall not need assistance,” he said firmly. “If the captain will instruct the purser not to detain Señor Ferraro longer, I shall wait a little while, and then go to his cabin.”
The Third Officer said: “But he will notice, perhaps, that the bar pin has vanished.”
Jo Gar smiled with his almond-shaped eyes on the swaying walls of the Captain’s office.
“I am very sure that he will,” he agreed tonelessly.
When Jo Gar rapped lightly on the door of Ferraro’s cabin it was almost six o’clock. The one in white called again:
“Who is it?”
Jo Gar said: “Señor Gar.”
The door was opened and Jo went inside. He was smiling a little.
Señor Ferraro was dressed in white trousers and a white shirt. He wore slippers. He said in a rather sharp voice:
“I have been in the cabin only a few minutes. A mix-up in my passage papers, and the purser is very stupid. But when I returned here — that bar pin had disappeared.”
Jo Gar stood with his back to the door and extended the palm of his right hand towards Ferraro. He said quietly:
“I have the honor — to return it.”
Ferraro’s face got hard. He took the pin, stared at it. He said, in a surprised tone:
“But now — there are two stones missing!”
His lips were twitching; he was breathing hard. Jo Gar nodded almost pleasantly. He put his right hand in a pocket of his palm beach coat.
“We removed one of them — one was already missing,” he said.
Ferraro stared at the Island detective. He said nastily:
“ ‘We’ removed one?”
Jo nodded again. “Mr. Fallibar aided me,” he said. “He is a diamond expert — an acquaintance of the captain.”
He watched the little jerk of Ferraro’s body. The man in white was fighting for control. But he said in a hard, rising voice.
“But why — did you remove one?”
Jo Gar shrugged. “It was one of the Von Loffler stones,” he replied. “I noticed a difference in the color, when you showed me the bar pin. I had Mr. Fallibar inspect it. The stone we removed is one of the ten missing ones — and quite valuable.”
Ferraro said hoarsely: “It’s a mistake! How would that pin have been lost — in here—”
Jo Gar stopped smiling. He said patiently:
“It wasn’t lost in here, Señor Ferraro.”
He waited, watching the fear in Ferraro’s eyes, watching the man’s attempt at control. Then he said in an easy tone:
“A Malay that I shot in Manila was dying. He told me to find ‘the one who walks badly — always in white.’ I wanted to know who the leader was — of the ones that robbed Delgado’s store. I came aboard this ship — when I learned you were coming aboard, Ferraro!”
Ferraro said hoarsely: “You’re — mad, Gar! You think I—”
His voice broke. Jo Gar nodded and moved his right pocket material a little.
“I think the Malay made a mistake, Señor Ferraro,” he said. “You were not the leader of the diamond thieves. But you had been with the Constabulary, and you could aid them. You were valuable, and for your services you received one diamond. A very valuable stone.”
There was a sneer across Ferraro’s face. Jo Gar said:
“You were not worried about me being aboard. Perhaps you were offered a bigger reward — for my death. You wanted to create a mystery, and to show me that you possessed nothing of value. You did not work alone. You thought that a safe way to carry your diamond was in the cheap pin. And you used it to attempt throwing me off the trail. But you wished to kill, also. You bribed the deck steward — and he told you I was asleep. You fired three shots at what you thought was Señor Gar, and you got away. You wore dark clothes — and threw them overboard. Then you were in white — a man in white.”
Ferraro said hoarsely. “That is a lie! I did not—”
Jo Gar said: “It is not a lie. The dark coat did not get clear of the vessel. It caught over an open port, just above the waterline—”
Ferraro’s voice was almost a scream. He cried: