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.
She hung up, went to a wide center table and poured whiskey into a tall glass, sat down and stared vacantly at the glass — her hand was shaking a little. She smiled suddenly, crookedly, lifted the glass to her mouth and drained it. Then she put the glass on the floor and leaned back and glanced at the tiny watch at her wrist. It was ten minutes after nine.
At a few minutes after ten a black Packard town-car stopped in front of a narrow building of gray stone on East Fifty-fourth Street; a tall man got out, crossed the sidewalk and rang the bell. The car went on. When the door swung open, the tall man went into a long, brightly lighted hallway, gave his hat and stick to the checkroom attendant, went swiftly up two flights of narrow stairs to the third floor. He glanced around the big, crowded room, then crossed to one corner near a window on the Fifty-fourth Street side and sat down at a small table, smiled wanly at the man across from him, said: “Mister Druse, I believe.”
The other man was about fifty, well set up, well-groomed in the way of good living. His thick gray hair was combed sharply, evenly back. He lowered his folded newspaper to the table, stared thoughtfully at the tall man.
He said: “Mister Hanan,” and his voice was very deep, metallic.
The tall man nodded shortly, leaned back and folded his arms across his narrow chest. He was ageless, perhaps thirty-five, forty-five; his thin, colorless hair was close-clipped, his long, bony face deeply tanned, a sharp and angular setting for large seal-brown eyes. His mouth was curved, mobile.
He asked: “Do you know Jeffrey Crandall?”
Druse regarded him evenly, expressionlessly for a moment, raised his head and beckoned a waiter. Hanan ordered a whiskey sour.
Druse said: “I know Mister Crandall casually. Why?”
“A little more than an hour ago Crandall, or Crandall’s men, tried to murder Mrs. Hanan, as she was driving back from my place at Roslyn.” Hanan leaned forward: his eyes were wide, worried.
The waiter served Hanan’s whiskey sour, set a small bottle of Perrier and a small glass on the table in front of Druse.
Druse poured the water into the glass slowly. “So what?”
Hanan tasted his drink. He said: “This is not a matter for the police, Mister Druse. I understand that you interest yourself in things of this nature, so I took the liberty of calling you and making this appointment. Is that right?” He was nervous, obviously ill at ease.
Druse shrugged. “What nature? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m sorry — I guess I’m a little upset.” Hanan smiled. “What I mean is that I can rely on your discretion?”
Druse frowned. “I think so,” he said slowly. He drank half of the Perrier, squinted down at the glass as if it had tasted very badly.
Hanan smiled vacantly. “You do not know Mrs. Hanan?”
Druse shook his head slowly, turned his glass around and around on the table.
“We have been living apart for several years,” Hanan went on. “We are still very fond of one another, we are very good friends, but we do not get along — together. Do you understand?”
Druse nodded.
Hanan sipped his drink, went on swiftly: “Catherine has — has always had — a decided weakness for gambling. She went through most of her own inheritance — a considerable inheritance — before we were married. Since our separation she has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. I have, of course, taken care of her debts.” Hanan coughed slightly. “Early this evening she called me at Roslyn, said she had to see me immediately — that it was very important. I offered to come into town but she said she’d rather come out. She came out about seven.”
Hanan paused, closed his eyes and rubbed two fingers of one hand slowly up and down his forehead. “She’s in a very bad jam with Crandall.” He opened his eyes and put his hand down on the table.
Druse finished his Perrier, put down the glass and regarded Hanan attentively.
“About three weeks ago,” Hanan went on, “Catherine’s debt to Crandall amounted to sixty-eight thousand dollars — she had been playing very heavily under the usual gambler’s delusion of getting even. She was afraid to come to me — she knew I’d taken several bad beatings on the market — she kept putting it off and trying to make good her losses, until Crandall demanded the money. She told him she couldn’t pay — together, they hatched out a scheme to get it. Catherine had a set of rubies — pigeon blood — been in her family five or six generations. They’re worth, perhaps, a hundred and seventy-five thousand — her father insured them for a hundred and thirty-five, forty years ago and the insurance premiums have always been paid...” Hanan finished his whiskey sour, leaned back in his chair.
Druse said: “I assume the idea was that the rubies disappear; that Mrs. Hanan claim the insurance, pay off Crandall, have sixty-seven thousand left and live happily forever after.”
Hanan coughed; his face was faintly flushed. “Exactly.”
“I assume further,” Druse went on, “that the insurance company did not question the integrity of the claim; that they paid, and that Mrs. Hanan, in turn, paid Crandall.”
Hanan nodded. He took a tortoise-shell case out of his pocket, offered Druse a cigarette.
Druse shook his head, asked: “Are the insurance company detectives warm — are they making Crandall or whoever he had to do the actual job, uncomfortable?”
“No. The theft was well engineered. I don’t think Crandall is worrying about that.” Hanan lighted a cigarette. “But Catherine wanted her rubies back — as had, of course, been agreed upon.” He leaned forward, put his elbows on the table. “Crandall returned paste imitations to her — she only discovered they weren’t genuine a few days ago.”
Druse smiled, said slowly: “In that case, I should think it was Crandall who was in a jam with Mrs. Hanan, instead of Mrs. Hanan who was in a jam with Crandall.”
Hanan wagged his long chin back and forth. “This is New York. Men like Crandall do as they please. Catherine went to him and he laughed at her; said the rubies he had returned were the rubies that had been stolen. She had no recourse, other than to admit her complicity in defrauding the insurance company. That’s the trouble — she threatened to do exactly that.”
Druse widened his eyes, stared at Hanan.
“Catherine is a very impulsive woman,” Hanan went on. “She was so angry at losing the rubies and being made so completely a fool, that she threatened Crandall. She told him that if the rubies were not returned within three days she would tell what he had done; that he had stolen the rubies — take her chances on her part in it coming out. Of course she wouldn’t do it, but she was desperate and she thought that was her only chance of scaring Crandall into returning the rubies — and she made him believe it. Since she talked to him, Wednesday, she had been followed. Tomorrow is Saturday, the third day. Tonight, driving back to town, she was followed, shot at — almost killed.”
“Has she tried to get in touch with Crandall again?”
Hanan shook his head. “She’s been stubbornly waiting for him to give the rubies back — until this business tonight. Now she’s frightened — says it wouldn’t do any good for her to talk to Crandall now because he wouldn’t believe her — and it’s too easy for him to put her out of the way.”