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.
Every nerve alert, he walked to the head of the stairs. He went down them slowly. The boards creaked again as he crossed them. He went on.
Again those sounds served as a signal. Sue McEwen heard them. She was hidden behind the door of a room directly across from that which Ned Dargan had just left. Realizing that the creaking of the board under her feet might have been heard, she had hastened along the hallway and slipped into the front room just as Dargan had opened the rear one. Now, seeing the way clear, she crept back into the hall.
She crossed it. She opened the door of the room which Dargan had left — the hidden headquarters of the Moon Man. She slipped inside and looked around. It was bare. It was musty. It looked unpromising; but Sue McEwen was tantalized by the mystery of what was happening.
She gasped. From the hallway again came creaks. The man she had seen enter the house was returning to the upper hallway. Even as she turned, Sue McEwen heard his step toward the door she had just entered.
She turned quickly away from that door. She hurried across to another, which apparently communicated with a room beyond; but it balked her. It was locked. She whirled again. In a corner she saw a closet. She jerked open its door. It was empty. She sidled inside and closed the door upon herself.
At that instant she heard a step in the room. The man had come back. He was standing within a few yards of her now — unaware of her presence. She stood straight, her tiny automatic leveled. She was determined to wait — and listen — and learn.
Now she was going to see what connection all this had with the Moon Man. Now, perhaps, she might even learn who the Moon Man was.
Chapter V
In Dead of Night
Faintly the sound of a tolling gong came into the library of Kent Atwell. Twelve slow strikes — midnight.
Gil McEwen, hidden in the closet, heard the trembling beats. Steve Thatcher, in a room directly above, listened to them and smiled.
He silently opened the door of the bedroom which had been assigned to him. He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Along each wall of the hall was a row of such doors, all closed. Behind one of them was Kent Atwell himself. Behind the others were detectives.
Steve Thatcher crept to the nearest door. Beneath its knob the handle of a key protruded — outward. Very slowly he turned it — without a sound. And he smiled. While making the rounds of the house he had carefully removed the keys from the inside of the bedroom doors and placed them on the outside. He passed up and down the hallway silently as a ghost. At each door he turned a key.
Now one millionaire and four detectives were securely locked in their rooms — and did not know it!
Steve Thatcher crept down the front stairs into the vestibule. Again he locked a door and imprisoned another detective. He crept to the rear hallway and made a captive of another sleuth. So far he had contrived to imprison every man save Gil McEwen.
Steve Thatcher drew the bolt of the rear entrance, slipped outside, and hurried toward the street. At the car left by Gargan, he stopped. He unlocked the rumble compartment and from it removed a black bundle. Then, quickly, he returned to the rear door of the house.
Pausing, he drew on his long, black cloak and pulled on his black silk gloves. He placed on his head the glass mask modeled as a moon. It was padded inside so that it sat firmly on his head. A deflecting plate, which came into position over his nose and mouth, sent his breath downward and out, so that it would not fog the glass and blind him. He was ready.
He stealthily opened the rear door and let himself in. Through the glass he could see as clearly as though there was nothing on his head. He trod up the rear stairs, along the hallway, then down the front flight into the vestibule. Outside the unlocked door of the library he paused.
Gil McEwen, he knew, was inside — waiting.
The Moon Man laid his black hand on the knob of the library door. He twisted it. He eased the door open and peered through the narrow crack. Within six feet of him, though unseen, sat Gil McEwen.
McEwen’s closet door was partly open, but he could see only the wall opposite, the wall in which the safe was set. He could not see the door opening slowly under pressure of the Moon Man’s hand. He heard not the slightest sound. The Moon Man drifted into the room.
The black-cloaked figure flattened itself against the wall. It moved toward the closet door with one arm outstretched. The other arm also moved — toward a light chair. The Moon Man picked it up. His body tensed.
Suddenly he sprang. He struck the closet door and slammed it shut. Instantly he braced the chair under the knob. A startled cry came from behind the door. The knob rattled. From inside McEwen pushed — hard. The door would not open. The tilted chair wedged it firmly in place.
“By damn!” rang through the panels.
The Moon Man turned away quickly as the door shook. McEwen was throwing himself against it. From the black space within came another muffled cry:
“Get him! Carter! Landon! Winninger! Carpen! Go after him!”
The sound of McEwen’s furious voice carried through the walls. Quick movements sounded upstairs. Knobs rattled. Across the lower hallway two more knobs rattled. Upstairs and down six imprisoned detectives and one imprisoned millionaire cursed.
And the Moon Man chuckled.
Suddenly the report of a gun blasted with a hollow sound. Splinters flew from a panel of McEwen’s closet. A bullet hissed across the room and shattered a window pane on the opposite side. The shattered glass fell very close to the position of the wall-safe.
“No use, McEwen!” the man in the silver mask exclaimed. “I’ve already got it!”
McEwen snarled; and he did not fire again. He flung himself against the door. It literally bulged under the impact of his body. The Moon Man heard the wood of the chair crack. He hurried to the wall-safe.
He grasped the four books and flung them away. He snapped open the door of the safe. He snatched out the sheaf of banknotes. They disappeared through a slit in the side of his cape.
The closet door thumped again. This time it gave a little more. Upstairs men were pounding and cursing. Bedlam filled the house. And once more McEwen crashed against the inside of the closet door.
The Moon Man hurried into the vestibule. He jerked open the front door and sped along the walk to the street. He ducked behind the car and with quick movements divested himself of his costume. Cloak, gloves and glass mask went into the rumble compartment. The next instant Steve Thatcher’s hands went to the wheel.
A shot rang sharply near the house. A bullet whizzed through the air. Steve Thatcher jerked a glance backward to see one of the lower windows opening, and a plain-clothes man leaping through — after him. Steve’s motor roared. He slammed into gear and spurted away.
Another shot. Another. Then Steve Thatcher sent the coupe swerving around the corner — and he was out of range.
In the library a splintering crash sounded. A panel of the closet door cracked out under the terrible impact of Gil McEwen’s hard shoulder. He reached through the opening, snatched the chair away, slammed out.
He heard the shots outside the house. He went out the front door at almost a single leap. The plainclothes man with the smoking gun saw him and shouted:
“He’s getting away in that car!”
McEwen whirled like a top. He sped toward the edge of the Atwell grounds and crashed through the hedge with a flying leap. As fast as his legs could swing he ran toward the driveway in which the police cars had been left. There he stopped short and cursed.
The sedan was farthest back in the driveway. Steve Thatcher’s roadster was behind it, blocking the way out! McEwen hurried to it — and saw that the ignition was locked! He spun back furiously, slipped behind the wheel of the sedan, and started the motor. With an utter disregard for law and garden, he spurted off around the opposite side of the house, jounced off the curb, twisted the wheel madly, and pressed the gas pedal against the floorboards.