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.
“Now if you two will just wait here, I will enter the study, carefully locking the door behind me. The entire outside wall will be under your observation; I will leave the window open so you can hear any sounds which may come from below, and can call to you if I desire. If you see any person approaching that study window, capture him at any cost. There may, perhaps, be more to this than appears on the surface.”
“Alfred,” I pleaded, “let me accompany you. Dwire can watch the wall all right, and I hate to think of you sitting alone in the dark with that thing.”
“Nonsense,” came the retort. “I sincerely and keenly appreciate your concern; but I rather expect there will be occasion for you to pursue a very material skeleton with flesh and blood on its bones, and there will be absolutely no one in the study except myself. I am merely the decoy. Keep a sharp watch on that window, and if anyone tries to get through it stop him, even if you have to shoot.”
With no other parting than this, Dr. Potter abruptly took himself downstairs to the study, from the window of which we shortly saw his head protruding.
“That’s fine,” he said, in response to my inquiry as to our positions. “I will remain here with the lights out. There is enough reflected light in the room to see outlines, and you keep a sharp watch on the window and the ground. You will probably have to wait an hour or so until things quiet down.”
With this whispered admonition he withdrew his head, leaving us straining our ears and eyes, and accustoming our vision to the semi-darkness of the night.
“Are there any servants, gardeners or other attendants likely to be about?” whispered the detective. “If I see anyone prowling around here I want to be sure of my ground, as I am likely to shoot first and ask questions afterward.”
I answered in the same tone:
“No. Kimi has his own quarters, opening from the kitchen, does all the inside work, including the preparation of meals. The chauffeur lives in town, and goes home every night at five-thirty, Kimi doing any driving required after that. Professor Kennedy certainly is not a night prowler, and has given us his assurance that he will be locked in the laboratory at the north end of the house.”
Dwire kept his eye glued to the ground and windows below, while I, mindful of the face I had seen at the window earlier in the evening, kept my attention about equally divided between the ground below and the porch on which we were sitting.
The moon was nearly half full, and barely visible through high fog clouds. The surroundings were enveloped in silence, penetrated at intervals by the whine of an automobile hurrying along the highway.
The influence of the calm night acted soothingly on my nerves, and I fell into a reverie, thinking of the courage of the scientist, and the stern control with which he mastered his emotions.
My thoughts were interrupted by a slight pressure on my arm. Almost at the same time I heard a faint noise, something in the nature of a rustle, apparently coming from the study itself. I strained my eyes into the darkness, and then, suddenly, without warning, the silence of the night was shattered by a cry from Dr. Potter such as I had never expected to hear.
“Quick, Pearce, Dwire! Here, quick!” he shrieked. “Good God — CROTHERS!!”
Then silence.
I knew the lay of the land better than Dwire, and was able to enter the study window ahead of him. After fumbling in the dark for a moment, I switched on the lights. I am satisfied that not more than ten or twelve seconds elapsed from the time of the first cry until the room was flooded with light.
Never will I forget the sight which met my eyes!
Sitting in a wicker chair, some ten feet from the south wall of the room, and facing the window, sat Dr. Potter; but, from the manner in which he was slumped over the arm of the chair, I knew the reason we had heard nothing more from him after the first cry. A knife or other pointed instrument had penetrated his heart, and death must have been instantaneous.
Facing him, and some twelve feet distant, the skeleton of Elbert Crothers danced and swayed from its hanging on the closet door. Rattling and oscillating in an ever diminishing orbit, it looked just as though it had been walking around, and had suddenly climbed back on the door when it heard us enter the room!
The ribs scraped softly against the wood; the bones of the fingers quivered and rattled, and the fleshless face grinned into the dead countenance of my murdered friend!
I had just time to take in the situation when Kimi, with a bath robe around him, knocked at the study door, which Dr. Potter had latched with the spring lock when he entered the room. Kimi had heard the cry, even in his bedroom, and realized as well as I did that nothing within the realm of human experience could have forced his master to utter such a sound.
I opened the door for him and silently indicated the tragic sight. It took him a moment to realize that his beloved master was dead; and then, as his emotion overcame him, he bowed his head in silence, regardless for the moment of our presence.
At that instant, just as Dwire completed his examination of the body, and looked up to give his conclusions, a white, drawn face, the same I had seen earlier in the evening, peered for a moment against the dark background of the open window — and was gone.
Almost as quick as the face “registered” in my vision, Dwire had drawn his revolver and rushed to the casement. Unarmed as I was, I jumped through the window right at his heels.
The yard was deserted.
“You take that corner,” directed Dwire in low, crisp tones, “and I’ll take this.”
It was not until after I had reached the corner of the house that I remembered I had no weapon, and should I overtake the mysterious prowler would probably be killed myself; but I had only to think of that still form in the chair to make me feel I would gladly chance my life just for the satisfaction of getting my hands on the murderer.
We made a thorough search of the yard, as well as we could in the darkness, but could see nothing, and again met at the back of the house following a ten-minute, fruitless search.
“Did you look in the garage?” whispered Dwire.
I confessed that I had not, and we started together toward the low building. Even as we did so, there came the whine of an electric starter, the roar of a motor, and Dr. Potter’s car leaped from the building, skidded into the turn of the graveled driveway, and disappeared down the concrete highway at terrific speed, the whine of the tires on the smooth surface of the road sounding for several seconds after we had lost sight of the speeding car.
In the momentary flash of reflected light from the headlights of the automobile as it rounded the turn, I had recognized the form of Dawley, the chauffeur, crouched over the wheel.
“Hell!” exploded Dwire. “If we’d been five seconds earlier we could have stopped that bird. As it was, I could have taken a shot at him, but we can telephone the police at Santa Delbara and have him stopped before he has gone five miles. Come on, let’s get to the phone.”
We rushed back to the house, found the telephone in order, and were assured that two motorcycle officers would be sent out at once to apprehend the driver of the car. The sergeant who answered the telephone advised us Kimi had telephoned in a few minutes earlier advising of the murder of Dr. Potter and that a police car was even now on its way to the house.
We hung up the receiver and stepped downstairs to find Kimi. He was crouched before a door on the north side of the house, his ear to the keyhole, and an expression of diabolical hate distorting his dark face. When he heard us in the corridor, he straightened up and knocked at the door.
“Mista Ploffessa Kennedy,” he advised us, “I tell him what happens.”