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.
“Can you?” she repeated.
“Of course I can!”
“Swear?”
“On the Bible.” And I held my hand in the air and cussed.
She was still for a moment. Then she leaned forward and whispered:
“I know who killed Mr. Carr!”
I was dumbfounded.
“You what?” I cried.
Jane slapped her hand over my mouth.
“Sh!” she whispered. Then she drew her chair nearer. “I called at Mr. Carr’s the other night after supper,” she said, leaning way forward and staring at me wild-eyed. “He owed me some money, and I suddenly decided to ask him to pay me. Well, I went to his back door and rang, and after a while he came. He was mad when he saw who it was, and madder still when I told him what I wanted. He started to tell me to go away, but then he changed his mind and said he would pay me if I stayed and washed the kitchen floor.
“Well, it was late, but I needed the money, so I said I would. He went upstairs, and I took off my coat and put on my apron and got to work.
“I was about half done when the front door bell rang. I answered it. It was Mr. Burnet. He smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ and asked if Mr. Carr was in. I said he was, and he went upstairs, and I went back to work.
“Pretty soon I heard a lot of angry talk and shouting over my head. I had about finished my work then, but I wanted my money that night, so I decided to wait until Mr. Burnet left and then ask Mr. Carr for it. I sat down in that old rocking chair in the kitchen.
“I was pretty tired and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I looked at the clock. It was two-thirty.
“I thought it was funny Mr. Carr hadn’t waked me up and sent me home, but I decided to creep out and come back next day. But just then I looked out and saw the light from his window reflected on the lawn. So I reckoned he was awake and thought I’d go up and get my money.
“I went out in the hall. It was dark and quiet. I walked up the carpeted stairs, very quiet, so as not to wake him, if he had fallen asleep.
“I got to the top of the stairs and saw the light in his room. I crept across the hall and when I got to the door, I peeked in. And there—”
Jane put her hand over her eyes as if she still saw it. I waited a minute, feeling the stillness of the little cabin creep over me. It made me uneasy.
“Go on, Jane,” I said in a whisper.
She took her hand from her eyes and went on, trembling all over.
“And there I saw Mr. Carr, lying back in his easy chair, a dagger stuck in his heart!
“I stood staring at him, so scared I couldn’t even scream. And while I stood there, the door to his little alcove opened and there I saw — Ah!”
I jumped at her cry and looked up. She was staring before her as if she saw Death. I thought she was seeing the murderer in her imagination.
“Who did you see?” I whispered, on the edge of my chair.
She didn’t seem to hear me.
“Who did you see?” I repeated.
She turned and looked at me as if she noticed me for the first time. Then in a loud, clear voice she cried:
“Alfred Burnet murdered Mr. Carr!”
I stared at her a minute. Then I dropped my head in my hands. So it was Al after all! My poor, beloved Al, Irene’s brother!
I had a funny empty feeling. There wasn’t anything more to do. There wasn’t anything to wonder about. I raised my head slowly.
“Do you want to go to bed now?” I asked her.
She nodded. She didn’t seem to have strength to speak. I dragged myself to one of the end beds and made it up with the blankets — there were no sheets. Then I put the screen around it and moved the table up outside of the screen so that she could reach around and lay her clothes there. It was too big to put inside.
“All right, Jane,” I said, and she got up slowly and went behind the screen. I dropped again in my seat by the stove and started looking glumly at the coals.
But I reckon Jane got a little scared when she was in the dark back of the screen, for she started talking at a great streak.
“Do you think this snow is going to keep up all night?” she asked in a little, quavering voice.
I looked up and saw her pretty little hand reach around the screen and put her gingham dress on the table.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, “and I don’t care much.”
“Well, I do! You see, I want to get home as early...” And she went on talking and saying things that didn’t interest me, just then when I was trying to wonder.
After a while she stopped, and I thought I’d put in a word, just to be polite.
“Don’t you intend to come back to New Paris again?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Hah, Jane?” I asked again.
But still she didn’t answer.
“She’s gone to sleep, poor kid,” I said to myself, and I took a little stick and started raking the coals to make the room a bit warmer.
Just then I heard her open the window.
“That’s funny,” I said to myself. “She’s awake after all!... And she might have waited until I went to bed. It’s as cold as blazes outside... I suppose she’s all upset...” And I settled back, trying to figure out things.
I had seen Al leaving Carr’s house after the murder. And that sure was his knife. And now Jane said he was the one that did it. But for all that, I couldn’t believe it! I couldn’t!... But if he didn’t, who did?
I was sitting back in my chair until it almost tipped over, with my feet resting against the side of the stove. The lamp was burning lower, and the light was sort of contracting away from the corners of the room. The big, dark screen was spread out and made a regular wall, a few feet in front of me. The reflection of the light on that was getting dimmer and I could just see the edge of the blackness that was around Jane’s bed.
Well, suddenly, while I was sitting there wondering, I saw Jane’s hand reach out and feel around the edge of the table that touched the end of the screen.
That was funny. There she was quiet all the time, and yet she hadn’t been asleep! I was just going to pipe up and ask her if I could get something for her, when I stopped, my heart in my mouth.
The hand that was feeling around was not Jane’s hand!
The light was pretty low by now and everything was blurred, but I could see the hand feeling around and feeling around. I leaned way forward, as quiet as I could, and looked.
It was a man’s hand! And on the finger you point with, there was a ring with a long, funny-shaped bloodstone in it.
I could hear my heart pumping. I sat way over and kept just as still, straining my eyes!
But now it was so dark I could just make out the quiet, moving hand. Finally it touched Jane’s underskirt. Its fingers closed on it and pulled it quietly off of the table. Then it disappeared.
I was scared stiff. I know sixteen’s pretty old to be scared, but I admit it just the same. I watched that screen and listened. But the screen slowly disappeared in the darkness and all I heard was Jane moving over in bed.
That made me a little more comfortable.
“You’re a big coward,” I told myself. “That was just Jane’s hand and you’re such a scarecrow that anything’ll get your goat.”
But all the time something told me it wasn’t and I knew I ought to get up and look.
I sat there, trying to get up nerve. I just sat tilted back, while everything got darker and darker and the open door of the stove made a light on the ceiling that grew brighter and brighter. And I heard a movement behind the screen as if Jane was restless: and then everything was still.
Finally I sat up with a plop.
“You go and look,” I told myself, “or I won’t ever speak to you again!”