The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
- Автор: Adams Cleve F., Babcock Dwight V.
- Год: 2010
- Язык: английский
- Год: A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- ISBN: 978-0-307-45543-7
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
He changed his mind and touched the paper to the burner. Evelyn had thought that he was joking when he told her what he planned to do. It might be best if she knew nothing of the matter until the entire affair was over. Perhaps he would never tell her. It might be best to let her think, as the police would think, that it had been the killer who killed Mazie. He watched the hour hand of the clock creep around the dial. The day, it seemed, would never end.
The warmth of the day had disappeared with the setting of the sun. A cold wind blew off the lake. John Cansdale considered a drink as he parked his car against the Wabash Avenue curb and then decided against it. Drink muddled the mind and he must keep his clear. He checked back, as he had checked a dozen times, and could find no flaw in his plan. Still his throat was suddenly dry and his hands had begun to tremble. Perhaps murder wouldn’t prove as simple as he thought.
“This is silly,” he reproved himself. “In two more hours she will be dead and I’ll be free.”
He bought a paper from a boy before entering the lunchroom and read it thoroughly while toying with his poached egg, corn-beef hash, and toast. The one detail that might possibly invalidate his plan had not occurred. The police, as yet, had not apprehended the killer. Rumor was rife as to when and where he might strike again.
He forced himself to eat. He must above all else impress himself upon everyone connected with his alibi as normal. He must show no trace of nervousness or fear.
“Nice supper,” he complimented the cashier when he had finished. He turned up the collar of his coat and pushed out through the swinging-door repeating: “Yes, sir. A very nice supper indeed.”
“What the hell!”
The cashier started out from behind his cage, stopped as the manager of the lunchroom shook his head.
“But he didn’t pay his check, sir,” the cashier protested.
The manager shrugged. “Skip it. He’ll pay next Wednesday night. He comes in here twice a week as regular as clock-work. He’s probably worried or something tonight, you know, got something on his mind.”
The cashier subsided, grumbling.
Out on the street John Cansdale scowled at his reflection in the window of a hat store. So far, so good. He was following his bi-weekly routine. Only tonight the hours that usually were filled with Evelyn in the snugness of her near north side apartment would rid him of his wife forever.
He thought of Mazie with disgust as he hurried up the great flat steps of the main library. The little fool was probably even now smearing her face with lotions, listening to the love-lorn programs on the radio, trying, in her common little mind, to figure out some way of winning back his love.
The thought gave him sadistic pleasure. She didn’t know the meaning of love. They had never been physically, mentally, morally, or spiritually suited to each other. Still, he wondered why she smiled at him, at times, so very strangely.
The thought gave him pause as he checked through the library file cards for a certain book on the contributions of chemistry to human welfare. Women at times, some women, were very difficult to understand.
The librarian greeted him cordially. “Good evening, Mr. Cansdale. The book is coming nicely?”
“Nicely,” he assured her, smiling. “In fact, it’s almost finished.”
His hat in his hand and the volume under his arm he turned away from the desk to scan the crowded reading-room, ostensibly looking for a place to sit.
“Crowded, very crowded tonight,” he murmured as he moved away from the desk. There were, he estimated, perhaps five hundred persons in the several reading-rooms that comprised almost the entire top floor of the building. There were constant arrivals and departures. It was small wonder he was never missed. Miss Roby, the thin-lipped, prim, spinster librarian, would swear that he had been there since the time his card was stamped. He turned out into the corridor leading to the other reading-room and to the stairs.
Behind him, at the desk, Miss Roby adjusted her pince-nez as she stared after him, then turned to an assistant.
“I suppose,” she said, “I should report him. I would if he wasn’t a school employee. He always chooses a volume that isn’t supposed to leave the library. But he always brings them back.”
“But where does he go?” her assistant puzzled.
The librarian shrugged her thin shoulders. “Lord knows. He’s supposed to be writing a book. I wonder. He’s been coming in here at five forty-five, choosing a volume on chemistry, and then disappearing until nine for two years.”
Her assistant laughed: “Meow.”
“I wouldn’t,” Miss Roby sniffed, “be at all surprised.”
In the corridor Cansdale waited until a good-sized group of youngsters had started down the marble stairs, and then joined them. The volume was under his coat. It was an unneeded precaution. The aged attendant in the foyer never even bothered to look up.
He remembered with a start as he unlocked his car that he hadn’t phoned Evelyn and told her that he wouldn’t call tonight. Perhaps it was just as well. She didn’t need to know until it was all over. She might even try to dissuade him because of the risk he ran. He stroked his thin wisp of a mustache and stepped on the starter button.
He ran no risk — or did he? His self-confidence oozed slightly as he swung his car down Randolph Street and waited at Michigan Boulevard for the green arrow. He must, above all else, drive carefully. Even a slight accident or a ticket could destroy his well-laid plans. The thought made him even more nervous as he recalled Robert Burns’ immortal lines:
In his nervousness he killed his motor as the light changed and was bumped soundly by the cab behind him. He was glad it was a cab. Cab drivers took little notice of such matters. They were inferior, boisterous persons, always bumping someone. He joined the stream of traffic pouring north.
In the yellow cab in back of him an earnest youth, his first night behind the wheel, jotted the numbers 905–754 down carefully on the margin of his report sheet. The car ahead hadn’t stopped. He doubted if there was any damage done, but when a man had been out of work for months, he couldn’t be too careful. It might be just as well to report the incident when he checked in.
The Bridge, Chicago Avenue, Oak Street, and the juncture of the Outer and the Inner Drive. Cansdale chose the Inner Drive, his self-confidence returning. In another fifteen minutes, a half-hour at the most, it would be over and he would be returning to the Loop. Lincoln Park was dark and bleakly naked except for her necklaces of yellow gems strung in rows around her ample body.
The lights reminded him of Mazie’s yellow diamonds. They would look well on Evelyn. But he must manage to show grief, perhaps even offer a reward for the killer. He would be safe enough in that. The thought amused him and he laughed, only to find the hoarse burst from his throat had frightened him. He realized that his hands and his body were shaking as with some inner palsy. The night was no longer cool. His collar had become too tight, his overcoat too heavy. Despite the cool wind blowing in the open window of the car he was perspiring freely.
“I’m acting the fool,” he said aloud. “There’s nothing at all to fear. I’ve been too circumspect. I’ve planned too well.”