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.
“If a person who is an enemy to society works alone,” he stated, “it is excellent. If two people work together it is less excellent and yet it is not altogether foolhardy. But if three people go out on a job it is flirting with disaster. We are Three. Do you understand what I mean?”
Klug shook his blond head.
“No, I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” said the girl.
Lott made an impatient gesture.
“I see why you, Martin Klug, are a river rat. And I see why you, Beatrice, Jewel of my Turban, have never risen above the level of a maid servant. You are both handicapped by the lack of intelligence and imagination. Both of you together don’t own the intellect of a common, garden-variety spider. You disgust me.”
Klug scowled.
“Well, what the hell do you mean?”
“Do you mean we should rob Mrs. Cabbler?” the girl asked, breathlessly.
“Ah, a gleam of intelligence!” Lott said mockingly. “Certainly we shall rob Mrs. Cabbler. Seventy years of age and a trunk full of money! She is made to rob. We have our own particular desires. Beatrice wants a pair of those long white gloves that come to the elbow, to replace the dirty ones she carries—”
“And I,” put in Martin Klug, brightening up, “need a new pair of shoes. These are all in.”
Lott smiled.
“While I am desirous of placing my books on the newsstands of the underworld. A thousand dollars will float my Primer. It will be of wonderful assistance to young, ambitious crust-floppers, grifters and heavymen. It will make me famous.”
The girl grew animated.
“I should love to rob that skinny witch. And, oh, those gloves—”
Lott picked at his chin with his nervous fingers.
“We shall rob Mrs. Cabbler, the skinny witch. But two of us only must go. Beatrice must be one. She must guide one of us to the bedroom and the trunk with the money. She knows the house. Who will go with her? Martin Klug or myself? We shall draw straws and see.”
He picked up a discarded newspaper, lying beside his chair, and tore two strips of unequal length from it. These he placed in his pale, thin hand and extended the hand toward the blond youth.
“Take one, Martin Klug. If you draw the long strip of paper you go with Beautiful Beatrice and rob Mrs. Cabbler. If you draw the short one I go.”
Klug hesitated a minute and then drew one of the strips of paper from the hand before him. It proved to be the longest piece.
“So be it,” Lott said. “Go with Beatrice and rob the skinny witch. And remember these things: Use no violence of any kind. Take no chances, leave no clues. Take great pains to cover every step and don’t be in a hurry. After you have the money, if you will go back and check over every move you have made, in quest of suspicious or incriminating clues left behind, and then remove them, you will have accomplished the Perfect Crime. I hope you know and understand my meaning.”
Klug inclined his head.
“I do.”
Lott looked at a battered nickel watch.
“Twelve after one.” He considered the two with a roving glance. “We’ll spring this job on a share and share alike basis. We’ll divide Mrs. Cabbler’s money into three equal portions. But we must decide now on a place where we can cut the swag. It’s bad business dividing in a public place. Where can we go?”
The girl stood up.
“I know the very place. I live with my sister. She has a flat up on Tenth Avenue. She’s away now. You can both go there. You can stay there as long as you want.”
Lott attained his feet.
“Fine. Let’s start for Mrs. Cabbler’s now. A woman of seventy sleeps as heavily at twelve o’clock as at three.”
Martin Klug stood up.
“Are you coming, too?” he inquired, as if surprised.
Lott turned up his coat collar.
“Certainly. I shall wait outside for you both.”
II
Two men and a girl sat at a table in the living-room of a cheap Tenth Avenue flat. It was the night following. A gas jet flickered garishly. An empty whisky bottle was on the table. The odor of booze mingled with that of cigarettes.
“Are you sure,” Lott said, “you left no telltale marks behind you, incriminating evidence? Did you follow my instructions to the letter? Did you make it a Perfect Crime?”
Martin Klug shifted about in his rickety chair.
“I’m sure. I remembered what you told me. I went over the ground carefully. I even picked up the burnt matches.”
“Robbery,” said Lott, “means anywhere from five to twenty years. But murder means the chair. You made a mistake, Martin Klug. You shouldn’t have killed the old woman.”
The girl laughed.
“What else could he do? Just when we pulled out the trunk the old witch opened her eyes. She began to squawk.”
Lott shook his head soberly.
“You could have tied her up. You could have gagged her. You didn’t have to kill her!”
Martin Klug drew a breath.
“I was excited,” he confessed. “I’m used to freight cars, not bedrooms. I pulled out the trunk. Then I looked up and saw the old woman’s eyes looking at me. They were eyes like a fish’s, cold and dead looking. Then she began to squawk. So I took her skinny throat between my hands.”
“Bad business,” said Lott. “Well, there’s no use of shedding tears about it. It’s over and done with. Get the coin, Beatrice. We’ll split it up.”
The girl went to the corner of the room. She pulled aside a couch and drew out a package wrapped in newspaper. She brought this to the table and laid it before Lott. He opened it and drew out three packages of money.
“Nine thousand dollars,” he said. “Divide it by three and it equals three thousand dollars apiece.”
“I don’t see where you come off to get any of it,” Martin Klug grumbled. “What did you do?”
Lott twisted his lips into a grim smile.
“I suppose you want my share because you croaked the old lady? What did I do? Nothing, not a thing, except plan the robbery. This three thousand is my royalty on the idea. Get me? What do you say, Beatrice?”
“My name isn’t Beatrice,” the girl replied. “And I don’t say anything at all. Take the dough — it’s yours!”
“You’re a droll humorist, my young murderer, if you know what that is,” Lott said to the blond young man.
“Here, take your share of the stuff and keep your mouth shut. Beatrice, Pearl of Price, put your mitts on your three thousand. Take it, my dear. Heaven is witness you earned it!”
The girl grabbed up her package of money and hugged it to her full breast.
“Mine! All mine!” she exulted. “And that’s not all either! No, that’s not all! Wait — look! I want to show you something!”
She jumped up, went to her wrap and dug something out of a pocket — something long and supple as a white snake. She held the objects up before Lott’s eyes.
“Do you see ’em? Gloves — long white gloves that come up to my elbows!”
Martin Klug chuckled.
“She saw them on the dresser in the old woman’s room. She made a dive for them. She seemed to want them more than the coin. Women are funny.”
The girl pressed the gloves to her face.
“They’re just the kind I dreamed about! It’s a joke. I worked there three weeks to get the money to buy them and all the time the old hag had just the gloves I wanted. Well, they’re no use to her now. Won’t they look swell with that big hat of mine? I’m terribly lucky. When Martin Klug lit the match they were the first things I saw!”