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.
“You have grasped my idea exactly. It may be that someday we will know a great deal more of the existence after death. In the meantime, I wish to satisfy myself there are no natural causes for the sounds we have heard before undertaking a serious investigation, based upon the theory there is something supernatural causing those noises.
“Now, then, what I first want to find out is whether those sounds are being made by some person concealed on the outside of the room. Inasmuch as the skeleton is hung on the south wall, it is barely possible someone might be directly in line with the skeleton on the outside of the house, making the noises.
“I usually hear them several times during the evening, when I am alone in the study, and tonight I am going to go down to the study as usual, and ask you two to keep a sharp watch from the porch above. You can easily see any person sneaking around the outside wall.
“I nearly always hear the sound when I have turned out the light for the night, or just before I turn it on when entering the room. It has occurred to me that darkness makes it easier for the noises to be produced, and tonight I will sit in the room without turning the lights on. There will be enough moonlight to enable me to distinguish the outlines of objects.”
It may have been some premonition of impending evil, or it may have been the aftermath of the shocks to which I had been subjected that day, but I felt it would be tempting the fates for Dr. Potter to enter that room alone in the dark. I was about to voice my sentiments, when Professor Kennedy entered the room. As usual he walked directly to Dr. Potter, ignoring all other matters, and commenced to discuss some matter of research which was too deep for me to follow.
Dr. Potter, taking him gently by the arm, turned to Dwire.
“Professor Kennedy,” he said formally, “may I have the pleasure of presenting my friend Mr. Arthur Dwire of Los Angeles? Mr. Dwire will be with us for the next few days.
“Dwire, permit me to present Professor Kennedy, my associate, who has kindly volunteered to spend the summer with me, and to assist in constructing laboratory equipment and carry on research work.”
Dwire and Kennedy shook hands, the latter blinking away behind his heavy glasses, peering closely into the detective’s face, taking much more interest in him than he had in me when I had made his acquaintance.
“You have known the Doctor long?” he inquired in his jerky, explosive manner.
The question was just a trifle awkward, as Dr. Potter had apparently wished to conceal from Kennedy the fact that Dwire was a detective, and in the house as such. I admired the skillful manner in which the detective turned the question.
“Not as long as you have, Professor, but long enough to have heard Dr. Potter speak of your work in glowing terms.”
The Professor was plainly pleased.
“I have a little skill along my lines,” he confessed. “The big trouble in this house is to keep my equipment in adjustment. Somebody always seems to investigate everything I construct, and manages to leave it out of adjustment. I can’t help but feel that confounded Jap has his nose in about everything going on in the house.”
Our host explained:
“I have the study on the lower floor on the south side of the house, and I have fixed up a laboratory in one of the northern rooms for Professor Kennedy; between us we have the house pretty well filled with apparatus, and I am afraid, Professor Kennedy, dealing as he does with electrical equipment, finds it difficult to maintain delicate adjustments in a house whose foundations were built for residential purposes, rather than those of scientific investigation. You see, it only takes a very slight jar on the floor of the house to cause a shock to be transmitted throughout the place, which is fatal to the microscopic adjustment of delicate instruments.”
The chemist grunted.
“Your solution may be correct; but I think someone in this house who knows enough about electricity to understand the apparatus I am using is tampering with things.
“I will advise you here and now that in the future I want no servant in my room under any pretext. If I miss a meal, that’s my own business. As for sweeping and dusting, I’ll do it myself. I have just adjusted a lock and bolt on my laboratory door, and I want no Jap snooping around, or even knocking at the door. When I’m in, I’m in; and when I get ready to come out, I’ll come out.”
Having delivered this ultimatum, the Professor snapped around on his heel, nodded his head to us and left the room.
I turned to Dr. Potter and smiled:
“Evidently your assistant has some decided ideas of his own.”
“It is really an insane prejudice,” answered my friend. “He feels that Kimi is spying on him, and tampering with his delicate electrical apparatus. As a matter of fact, Kimi, while an excellent servant, has absolutely no curiosity, and, I am satisfied, has no ambition in life other than to attend to my wants.”
“I notice that you did not intimate to Professor Kennedy what my real job is,” Dwire broke in; “I therefore take it that you wish to keep my work a secret; but I was pretty sure that your Jap servant, who met me at the train, knew what I was here for. Are you taking special pains to keep the Professor in the dark?”
Dr. Potter looked troubled for a moment.
“I must admit the truth of what you say, but I don’t want you to think I am suspecting Professor Kennedy of anything, nor do I want you to do so. As far as I know, he has no idea that there is anything unusual in the matter of the skeleton. The peculiar moaning noise I have described has never occurred while he has been in my study. He knows nothing about it.”
Dwire smiled.
“I should say that the failure of the ghost to howl when Professor Kennedy was present was point number one.”
Dr. Potter made no reply; seemingly this point had either been in his mind before, or else he was considering the significance of it.
“By the way,” inquired the detective, “I presume it’s in order to ask where you picked the Professor up, and what you know of him.”
Dr. Potter answered readily enough:
“I know very little about him personally, and a great deal about him professionally. He is hardly the type one would expect to find as a professor of electricity and chemistry, but such is the case, and he is one of the leaders in those sciences.
“During the war I did some slight work along the line of developing new gases, and of controlling submarines by electricity. Professor Kennedy has some German blood in his veins; and, as it happened, was in Germany at the outbreak of the war. He was detained by the German government and forced to remain throughout the war, cooperating in the manufacture of war material, a work which was performed by him with reluctance, but which he was forced to do.
“Through the German secret service he, in some way, learned of my own modest activities in assisting the Allies along the same lines, and conceived the idea of making my personal acquaintance. Following the armistice he got in touch with me through a mutual friend, and has since been of the greatest assistance to me in connection with some of the electrical equipment I am making for my experiments. He has gradually become a fixture here, and has taken the position of assistant.
“However, all this discussion is keeping us from the real work at hand. Step out on the porch a moment and let me show you exactly what I wish you to do.”
By leaning over the rail of the porch, we could see the entire south wall of the study, and the two windows opening to the south. As the porch had a projecting roof, and vines trailing up the pillars, our heads would not be outlined against the sky, and we could plainly see any person on the ground below, without standing much chance of being seen ourselves.
Dr. Potter looked around the porch, peered at the ground below, and then placed us near a pillar almost directly over the study window.