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.
The tires whined as he wrenched the car around the corner. Far away he saw a gleam of red — the tail-light of another car traveling at high speed. McEwen’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. At the next corner he turned again; at the next, again. Running then along a street parallel with the fleeing coupe, he let the motor out.
He did not slow for intersections. He slowed for nothing. With the car traveling at its fastest, he plunged along the street. McEwen knew the fleeing coupe could not long keep up its breakneck speed. It must surely slow down to pass through the streets near the business center, or suffer the shots of a traffic policeman. Moreover, the city narrowed like a bottle’s neck toward the river. If the fugitive coupe went on, it must soon reach the bridge.
McEwen had the advantage. No traffic officer would try to stop or shoot at his police car. Deliberately he sent the sedan catapulting through the very center of Great City, its horn blaring. Lights flashed past. Other cars scurried for the curb. Pedestrians fled to the sidewalks. In a matter of seconds McEwen had put the congested district behind him and was racing toward the bridge.
Within a block of it, where two streets intersected in a V, he turned back. He knew that he was ahead of the coupe now. He shot to the next intersection and looked up and down the cross street. The same at the next, and the next. There was no place the coupe could escape him now if it stayed in the open. Sooner or later he was sure to see it.
Soon he did!
Glancing along a dark street lined by warehouses and shabby tenements, he saw a pair of headlights blink out. Instantly McEwen shut off his own, and stopped. He saw a coupe, two blocks ahead. He saw a dark figure climb out of it, turn, and hurry back along the street. He watched with eyes as keen as an eagle’s — and saw the dark figure slip into an alleyway.
McEwen got out of his car. He gripped his automatic tightly and began running through the shadows toward the alleyway. When he reached it he paused.
One second before Gil McEwen glanced down the dark alleyway, Steve Thatcher lowered the rear window on the second floor of the abandoned tenement. A quick climb up the rusty fire escape had brought him to it. In the darkness of the bare room he turned, lowering a dark bundle to the floor.
A moment later Steve Thatcher had vanished; the Moon Man had appeared.
He stepped to the closet and opened it. By the glow of a flashlight he worked quickly. He separated the sheaf of banknotes into three parcels. Each he fastened together with a band of silver paper. He snapped off the flash and turned to the connecting door.
He unlocked it. Slowly he went into the room. Ned Dargan turned at his approach. The Moon Man moved toward the table. From his one black-gloved hand dropped the four packets of currency.
“There you are, Angel.”
Dargan silently took up the money. He blinked; he thrust it into his pocket.
“Boss,” he said, “I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“Just after I came into this place a little while ago, somebody followed me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I heard the stairs creak. I went down to look around, but I didn’t find anybody. Cripes, boss, I don’t like it!”
“Nor I, Angel. I’ve an idea that in future we must be more careful. You had better stop delivering the money personally — send it by messenger. And we’d better change our headquarters. I’ll phone you, Angel — about a new place.”
The muffled voice broke off. The silver-masked head came up. Ned Dargan’s breath went sibilantly into his lungs.
From the hallway came a creak!
Then another!
“Somebody’s comin’ up!” gasped Dargan.
The Moon Man moved. He rounded the table, crossed to the door. With a quick motion he shot a bolt in place.
“Out the rear window, Angel — quick!”
Ned Dargan hesitated. “Say, listen! I ain’t goin’ to skip and leave you to face the music alone! I’m in this as much as you are, boss!”
“Angel, yours is a true heart. But get out that window right now! I’ll take care of myself.”
The Moon Man’s voice rang commandingly. Dargan did not hesitate again. He hurried into the adjoining room. He slid up the window and ducked through.
“Make it snappy, Angel! Take the car. And if you don’t hear from me again — bless you.”
“Boss—”
“Snappy, I said!”
Dargan moved. He disappeared downward in the blackness.
The closet door opened silently. Sue McEwen slipped into the room without a sound. She hesitated, peering through the open communicating door. In there, beyond the threshold, was a vague black figure.
It was turning — turning to close the connecting door.
Sue McEwen raised her tiny automatic.
“Please,” she said sharply, “throw up your hands!”
The Moon Man stood frozen. Through the glass that masked his face he could see the girl, standing in the glow of the moonlight that was shafting through a window. He could see the glittering gun in her hand — aimed squarely at him.
If she learned—
“Take off your mask!” she commanded.
The Moon Man could not move.
Then a sound — the rattle of a door knob. The door connecting with the hallway opened. The girl glanced toward it, catching her breath. Then, in a sob — a sob of relief — she exclaimed:
“Dad!”
Gil McEwen came through the door. He stared at his daughter. He turned and stared into the adjoining room, at the black-cloaked figure standing there — the thing with the silver head.
“By damn!” he said.
He sprang toward the Moon Man.
Instantly Steve Thatcher leaped forward. With one movement he slammed the door shut and twisted the key. He leaped back as a gun roared, as a bullet crashed through the wood. He whirled toward the window. He ducked out — cloak and mask and all — and began dropping down the fire escape.
Gil McEwen raised his gun to fire again through the door. But he did not fire. He spun on his heel, sprang into the hallway, leaped down the stairs. He burst out the front door, and whirled into the alley.
He peered at the window above. It was open. He peered at the fire escape. It was empty. He peered down the black alley. The Moon Man was not in sight.
McEwen sped through the shadows behind the buildings, but soon he paused. Useless to hunt here! As he came back his eyes turned to a row of wooden boxes, each fitted with wooden lids, which sat at the base of the tenement rear wall. They were coal-bins; each of them was large enough to hold a man. With gun leveled he moved toward them.
McEwen paused, grumbling with disappointment. On each bin-cover was a rusty hasp, and on each hasp was a closed padlock, corroded and useless, untouched for perhaps years. He turned away.
McEwen hurried toward the police-car with his daughter following close. A moment later the quiet of that dismal district was broken by the snarling of a motor and the whining of tires as the car spurted away.
After that, for a long time, the alley behind the deserted tenement was silent.
Then, at last, a faint movement. The cover of one of the coal-bins shifted. One edge of it raised — not the front edge, which was fastened by the padlock, but the rear edge, from which the hinges had been removed. Like a Jack-in-the-box, a man came out of it.