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.
“Say! Maybe we can learn who the Moon Man is by tracing that glass globe!” McEwen exclaimed. “Who makes the glass?”
“The Saint Gobain Company of France. Argus glass is the answer, Gil. The Moon Man can see as clearly as though he wasn’t masked at all, but nobody can see his face. His mask must be split down the middle so he can get his head into it, and he’s evidently painted the mirror surface to look like a moon.”
“By damn!” McEwen declared. “Just let me get within reach of that guy and I’ll take a whack at that glass mask. It’ll turn into splinters and then we’ll see who the Moon Man is!”
Stephen Thatcher smiled. He had not thought of that likelihood. A sharp blow would shatter the globe that masked the face of the Moon Man!... His smile faded. He was almost sorry now that he had divulged the secret. He had told McEwen this only because he was supposed to be working on the case and, to safeguard himself from suspicion, had decided that he had better make some discovery about himself.
“No kidding, Gil,” he said quietly. “Aren’t you keeping something back? Haven’t you some idea who the Moon Man is?”
“Not a damn’ notion!” McEwen declared. “How about you, Steve? Who do you think he is?”
“I,” said Steve Thatcher with a sigh, “couldn’t say.”
McEwen parked the police car a block from the Palace Theatre. He strode to the ticket-booth with Steve Thatcher; they bought tickets and went in. Immediately they turned toward the downstairs men’s room. They entered it to find Kent Atwell waiting.
Atwell was thin, dapper; his eyes were dark and deep-set. And at the moment he was visibly agitated. When McEwen identified himself, he immediately launched into a frightened, indignant explanation of the Moon Man’s threat.
“Here!” he exclaimed, pushing a sheet of crumpled paper toward McEwen. “Read that! The incredible presumption of it!”
The bit of paper was torn irregularly at the bottom. It was typewritten — done, McEwen could not dream, on a machine in police headquarters! Its message was terse:
DEAR MR. ATWELL:
Withdraw from your bank today the sum of five thousand dollars. Place it in a safe in your home. I intend to call for it tonight. Let me warn you that if you notify the police of my intentions, you will suffer worse punishment than death. That is my promise to you.
McEwen looked blank. “How do you know this is from the Moon Man?” he asked sharply. “Where’s the rest of it — the part that is torn off?”
Atwell turned pale. “It’s of no importance — just the typewritten signature. I accidentally tore it off and lost the piece, so—”
McEwen gestured impatiently. “Mr. Atwell, I beg your pardon, but it is my business to know when men are telling the truth. You are not being frank with me. There was more of this message — and if I’m to help you, I’ve got to have it.”
“Really, there—”
“Unless you produce it right now, Mr. Atwell, you can count on no help from me,” McEwen snapped.
Atwell sighed. He fumbled in his pocket. McEwen quickly took the bit of paper he produced — the lower half of the sheet he had already read. And he scanned a second paragraph:
What do I mean by a “worse punishment than death?” I mean disgrace and humiliation, the loss of your friends and position, becoming a pariah. I know that, while you were handling the drive for money under the United Charities, you as the treasurer of the organization helped yourself to five thousand dollars of the funds. I can and will produce proof of my statement if circumstances demand it. It is that stolen five thousand I want. You will leave it for me in your safe, as I direct, and make no move to interfere with my taking it — or I will give the facts to the newspapers.