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.
So I got up.
The lamp was as good as out, but there was a candle in the cupboard. I got it and lighted it.
It didn’t make the room any brighter. Just one little spot around me. However, I’d be able to see Jane.
I crossed the room on tiptoes, so as not to wake her. When I got to the screen, I hesitated. Then I stood off and peeked.
Jane was lying on her side, her back to me, and sleeping as peaceful as I could ask.
Gorry, you don’t know how relieved I felt! I could have danced a jig! But instead of that I just tiptoed back to the bed in the center of the room and set the candle down and undressed. Then I got in bed and blew out the light and in two minutes I was fast asleep.
I sat up in bed with a bounce. I had been dreaming that Al Burnet had murdered me and they’d accused Old Man Carr of it and they wanted me to testify and I refused, feeling I’d had about enough to do with the affair. I was sitting up, because Judge Forest had pulled me that far out of my grave, and I wanted to get back in again.
Well, I sat there, looking at a lot of darkness, and trying to convince myself I was in bed and not in my coffin.
“You dumbbell!” I said to myself, “a corpse can’t argue, and you’re arguing as fast as your two-for-a-cent brain can work!”
Well, that sort of settled matters about the graveyard... But still I wasn’t quite satisfied. There was something wrong and I couldn’t just think what it was.
I looked around, but I might just as well have kept my head still. It was as dark as a grave, and a lot more quiet... excepting I saw a bit of a bare, black tree trunk, and a piece of night sky on both sides of it.
Then I remembered I wasn’t alone and I felt relieved; Jane was with me and—
— and I had seen a hand reach out from behind the screen, that wasn’t Jane’s hand!
I remembered that, and I got cold all over... But I had seen Jane sleeping peacefully afterward... And you could tell she was sleeping peaceful now... peaceful and quiet.
...A little too quiet.
I laid the blankets carefully back, so as not to make a noise. Then I crawled to the end of my bed that was pointed toward the screen.
I waited there, on my hands and knees, looking to where the screen ought to be. And I listened.
There wasn’t a sound. I waited and listened, feeling something funny creep up from my stomach.
“Why, you nut!” I told myself. “Of course you can’t hear her! You can’t even hear your own breath!”
But then I decided that wasn’t odd, because, after investigating, I discovered I hadn’t been doing any breathing for some little time. So I grabbed the edge of the cot and leaned over until I almost fell into the darkness. Then I listened again.
But there wasn’t any sound.
“Jane!” I called, softly.
She didn’t answer.
“Jane!” I called again, louder; much too loud for a dark, empty cabin — for there was something empty about it. You can tell, somehow or other.
I got out of bed and felt around for my candle. Then I got a match and lighted it.
It was funny. Before I lighted it, the only light place was the patch behind the tree trunk. Then, suddenly, that was all swallowed up by the black windowpane, and now the room was lighted — not much lighted — just a flickering, shadowy light that hardly reached the corners and made the screen seem like a great, gloomy wall.
Then I walked up close (not too close), and peeked.
Well, it seemed all right. Jane was lying there, just as I left her... She hadn’t moved an inch... not an inch.
And then I saw something I hadn’t noticed before: something white that was bunched near her mouth. (Her head was turned away, you see.) I took a step forward.
The bedclothes were off her, and she was lying right below the window, where the cold, icy wind blew in. I tiptoed over to cover her up. And then that feeling in my stomach jumped right up into my mouth.
I saw blood!
It covered her nightgown, right above her heart, and the sheet below was just soaked with it!
Well, I squeezed that candle until I almost squashed it, and I made myself go and look. I crept up between the screen and the bed and leaned over.
She was dead!
I touched her arm. It was cold and stiff. I pulled it gently and she fell over on her back. And as her head fell over, her white underskirt came with it, for it was stuffed in her mouth!
She had been dead for hours. Somebody had climbed in the window and scared her into keeping still. Then he had stuffed her petticoat into her mouth while she lay there frightened stiff. And then, suddenly, he had stabbed her. Right in the heart.
And it was the hand of the murderer I had seen feeling around in front of the screen!
I figured this out quick, while I stood before the bed, shivering from cold and fear. And then I turned and almost knocked over the screen and ran back to my own side of the room.
I got into my clothes as quick as I could. I didn’t know who had murdered Jane, but I knew who could have stopped it if he hadn’t been such a damn coward! That was the only thought I had in my brain as I got dressed — that, and the thought of getting out of the cabin as quick as I could. I’d notify the police in New Paris, or something, but anyhow, I’d get out!
I didn’t know what time it was when I locked the door and climbed out of the center window, but when I dragged myself up the deserted street at the edge of town a couple of hours later, the sun hadn’t risen.
I didn’t have any thoughts in my head; just a funny jumble. So I went home and threw myself on my bed to wonder about it all. And then, before I knew it, I was fast asleep.
It was in the middle of the afternoon when I waked up. I lay wondering for about ten seconds. Then I jumped off my bed and ran out the door. I was going to tell the police about the murder of Jane.
I went down Main Street, wondering about poor Jane, until I had to stop doing that to wonder why I wasn’t bumping into anybody like I generally do when I’m wondering on Main Street. I looked up and then I saw why: there wasn’t anybody to bump into. Main Street was as deserted as it had been at dawn; and it was twice as dismal.
But I didn’t have much time to wonder about that. I wanted to report Jane’s death as quick as I could, and then gather some news about Al. So I headed for the Court House. And there I saw why Main Street was deserted.
The Court House was just chock-full of men and women, with little kids dripping out of all the windows. My heart started jazzing up, for I had a pretty good idea what the party was all about. I saw Jim Harley on the Court House steps and I wandered up to him.
“What’s up?” I asked, sort of careless-like.
Jim stared at me, as if I was some new species off of Mars.
“What brook did you drown yourself in,” he asked, “and you don’t know they’re trying Al Burnet?”
“I’ve been out to my country estate,” I told him. “What are they trying him now for, two days after the murder?”
“They’ve got to. The crowd’s been trying to get at him to lynch him all morning long, so Mr. Sparton’s made them get a quick trial to save his life and hang him proper.”
Well, I just felt myself turn white all over. Lynch Al Burnet! And this crowd of bums he’d always been so decent with, too! I had a lot of thoughts on the subject, and I expressed them in a loud voice to Jim and anyone else who might be around.
Jim listened, interested-like, until I got through. Then he turned and looked across the street.
“Do you think the branch of that there tree is very strong?” he asked me.
But I didn’t answer him. Somebody had just got down from the window next to the steps, and I ran over to it and pulled myself up and looked inside.