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.
“Sure, boss.”
Ned Dargan turned from the room. He closed the door tightly on the Moon Man. He peered at the panel, as though trying to penetrate it with his gaze and read the secret of the man in the room — a secret even he did not know. He walked down the stairs slowly, and eased out the front door.
“I can’t figure out who that guy is!” he told himself wonderingly. “But, cripes! I know he’s the swellest guy that ever lived!”
Ned Dargan had a solid reason for feeling as he did about the man whose face he had never seen — the Moon Man. He’d gone bad in the ring. A weakened arm made further fighting impossible. He found it just as impossible to find work. He’d drifted downward and outward; he’d become a bum, sleeping in alleys, begging food. Until, mysteriously a message had come to him from the Moon Man.
Some day Ned Dargan was going to fight again. Some day he was going to get into the ring, knock some palooka for a row, and become champ. And if he ever did, he’d have the Moon Man to thank for it...
The Moon Man stood in the center of the dismal room. He watched Dargan close the door. He listened, and in a moment heard a creak, then another. He knew those sounds the stairs made. The first was pitched at A Flat and the second at B in the musical scale. When B sounded before A Flat, someone was coming up. The Moon Man heard B follow A Flat and knew that Dargan was gone.
He turned away, opened a connecting door, and stepped into an adjoining room. He turned a key in the lock. The air was pitch black. The Moon Man made motions which divested himself of his cape. He pulled off his black gloves — luckily he had provided himself with more than one pair. He removed from his head that silver sphere, and he put all his secret regalia in a closet. The closet door he also locked.
Turning again, he silently opened a window, and eased out onto a rusted fire-escape. Rung by rung he let himself down into the alleyway behind. He paused, listening and looking around. Then he stepped forth...
The street-light’s glow fell into the face of Stephen Thatcher!
Steve Thatcher thought of things as he walked away from the house he had made the Moon Man’s rendezvous. In his mind’s ear he heard Gil McEwen saying: “I’ve sworn to get the Moon Man, and I will!” McEwen, the toughest detective on the force, who never failed to bag his man!
And he heard the voice of the girl he loved: “He’s nothing but a petty pilferer!”
Steve Thatcher lowered his head as though stubbornly to butt an obstacle. A wild scheme — his! He knew it. But, also, he knew the world — cruel and relentless — and he could not stand by and do nothing to save those who were suffering. The mere thought of letting others perish, while nothing was done to save them, was unendurable.
He was a cop’s son — revolt against injustice was in his blood — and not even the law could keep him from trying to right the wrongs he knew existed. Beyond the written law was a higher one to which Steve Thatcher had dedicated himself — the law of humanity.
And if he were caught? Would he find leniency at the hands of Gil McEwen and Chief Thatcher? No. He was certain of that. Even if McEwen and the chief might wish to deal kindly with him, they would be unable to. The Moon Man now was a public enemy — his fate was in the hands of the multitude. Steve Thatcher would be dealt with like any common crook — if he were caught.
He remembered Ernest Miller’s daughter, who must go to Arizona or die; he remembered Frank Lauder, who must be cared for; he remembered Bill and Betty Anderson, who must have help.
“It’s got to be done!” he said through closed teeth. “Damn, it’s got to be done!”
He walked swiftly through the night.
Chapter III
Another Victim!
Detective Lieutenant Gil McEwen’s phone clattered. He took it up. He glared at a photograph he was holding — a photograph of the Moon Man’s fingerprint — and grunted: “Hello!”
“Detective McEwen? Listen carefully. I’m calling—”
“Speak louder!” McEwen snapped. “I can’t hear you.”
“My name is Kent Atwell, Mr. McEwen,” the voice came more plainly. “I’m phoning you from a pay-station downtown because I don’t dare phone you from my home. I’ve been threatened — by the Moon Man.”
“What!” barked McEwen. He knew the name of Kent Atwell. Atwell was one of Great City’s most prominent citizens. His home was one of the finest. His influence went far. And here he was, huddling in a booth downtown like a rabbit in a hole, using a public phone because a threat of the Moon Man had filled him with fright! “The devil!” McEwen said.
“I’ve got to see you, Mr. McEwen — immediately. The Moon Man has threatened to rob me tonight. I don’t dare let you come to my home, or my office. Can I meet you somewhere?”
“Where are you?”
“In a drug store at State and Main streets.”
“You’re close to the Palace Theatre,” McEwen said briskly. “Buy a ticket and go in. Go down into the men’s room — be there in ten minutes. I’m coming right along, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Certainly. Thank you!”
McEwen pushed the phone back and scowled. He tramped out of his office into Chief Thatcher’s. He found the chief absent, but Steve Thatcher was sitting in his father’s old padded chair. The young man looked up.
“You come with me, Steve!” McEwen snapped. “This thing is getting worse and worse! The Moon Man’s going to stage another robbery — and this time he’s saying so ahead of time!”
“I’ll be damned!” said Steve Thatcher. “Listen, Gil. I’ve just found out—”
“Never mind! Come with me!”
McEwen went out the door. Steve Thatcher frowned; but he followed. He loped down the steps, crowded into a police-car beside McEwen, and said nothing until the car was whizzing down the street.
“Of all the damned gall!” the veteran detective blurted. “Sending a warning ahead of time! He must think he’s living a charmed life — that we can never touch him. I’ll show him where he’s wrong — then, by damn, he’ll wish he was on the moon!”
Steve Thatcher sighed. “I was about to tell you, Gil, that I think I’ve found out about this mask the Moon Man wears. You’ve wondered how he could see his way about, with a silver globe on his head. Well, evidently he can, because the thing isn’t silver at all, but glass.”
“Glass?” McEwen repeated. “How do you know?”
“It must be. That mask of the Moon Man’s has made us all curious, and I began trying to figure out how he could manage to move about with his head completely enclosed in a metal ball. Well, he can’t, of course. I browsed around the library today, and found the answer — Argus glass.”
“What’s Argus glass?”
Steve Thatcher smiled. “If you were a frequenter of speakeasies in New York, you’d know. Argus glass is named for the son of the mythological god, Zeus. Argus had a countless number of eyes, and some of them were always open and watching, so the legend goes. Argus glass is a mirror when you look at it from one side, and a perfectly clear piece of glass when you see it from the other.”
“Didn’t know there was any such thing!” McEwen snapped, sending the car swerving around a corner.
“Nor I, until I read about it. A big French jeweller’s store has in it several pillars of the glass. They look like mirrors to the customers, but they’re not. They’re hollow, and inside them sit detectives on revolving chairs. They can see everything that goes on in the store, but no one can see them. It wasn’t so long ago that speakeasy proprietors found out about the glass. They use it in their doors now instead of peepholes. Nobody can see in, but they can see out.”