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.
I had hardly seen Professor Kennedy. He rarely came to the table, and when he did, treated Dwire and myself as being so far beneath him intellectually as to have nothing in common with him. He would bolt his food in silence, blink owlishly at us, jerk back his chair, and leave the room with those short, quick steps which seemed so inconsistent in a man of his bulk.
At the repeated request of McDougal, I had continued John Dawley in my employ. The chief felt there was a great possibility he knew more of the murder than he was willing to admit, and wanted him where he could “keep an eye on him.”
Then about a week after the tragedy Dwire announced a hurried trip to San Francisco. During his absence he arranged to have a loyal old Irish police officer who had assisted him on many cases quartered in the house with me.
“I’m glad,” I assured him. “I wouldn’t stay in the house for a minute without him. If it wasn’t for the request Dr. Potter left in that letter that skeleton would have been buried a long time ago. I can’t get it out of my head but what that grinning skeleton had something to do with the murder of my friend, and that we shall find somehow, somewhere, Elbert Crothers, alive or dead, has a finger in the pie.”
Dwire merely smiled and made no comment. I felt that he had some more or less tangible clue.
So it happened that Kelley, the old patrolman, was quartered with me during Dwire’s absence. At the suggestion of Dwire, who informed me Kelley was as superstitious as he was brave, I said nothing whatever about the connection of the skeleton with the murder. I was in the study with him once and he noticed the skeleton hanging from the closet door, but I made no explanation of how it came to be there.
The night Dwire returned Kimi met him at the train and drove him to the house. He was just in time for dinner, and it was apparent that he was laboring under some considerable excitement. Once during the course of the meal he quietly remarked to me that he would have a solution of the mystery within the next forty-eight hours.
This announcement was made in a low voice, but Professor Kennedy, who sat at the end of the table, apparently engrossed in his own thoughts, snapped into immediate attention.
“What’s that, Mr. Dwire,” he exploded, peering through his heavy lenses at the detective. “What’s that you say? A solution of the murder within the next forty-eight hours?”
Dwire gazed directly into the Professor’s face.
“Your hearing seems remarkably good tonight, Professor.”
I fancied Dwire was slightly discourteous, but it also impressed me as strange that Professor Kennedy, who was habitually so absorbed in his thoughts as to make it necessary to speak two or three times to get his attention at the table, should have heard the low remark Dwire undoubtedly intended for my ears alone.
A few seconds later the Professor abruptly arose from the table and retired to his laboratory.
Kimi, who, I flattered myself, had always been devoted to me as a friend of the master’s, had passed to me with the estate, and his quiet deference and efficiency was the one bright spot in the whole tragic chain of events.
That night he asked permission to spend the evening in town with friends, and I readily consented. Since the Doctor’s death he had had very little opportunity to get out and I was glad to give him the chance for a little recreation, since both Kelley and Dwire were to spend the night with me.
Hardly had we retired to the library than Dwire pulled a photograph from his pocket, and asked me if I had ever seen the face before. The likeness was so perfect that I was startled. There could be no doubt of it. The face was that of the man I had seen looking in the window the night of the crime.
“I thought so,” said Dwire. “That’s a photo of the person who wrote to Dr. Potter demanding a burial of the skeleton, and signed himself ‘J. B. Jorgensen.’ However, unless I’m mistaken, he’s not the man who committed the murder, but he can give us a lot of interesting information when we catch him — for catch him we will.”
Hardly had the words left his mouth than, ringing and wailing through the house, rising and falling, louder than I had ever heard it before, came a ghastly wail, which I knew was coming from the grinning skeleton in the room below!
This time, however, it was not as it had been before, an isolated moan, but wail after wail shivered through the house, rising to the highest crescendo of fiendish menace, then dying away to the moan of a tormented soul. Never on earth could such a noise have been produced from a human throat, the volume of sound alone was such that no human being could have produced it, and the delicate nerves of one’s body tingled with a psychic recognition of the unearthly quality of the sound.
Kelley, the rough police officer of hundreds of wild and dangerous experiences, turned white as a sheet and crossed himself repeatedly. As for myself, I know that the color left my face, and I could feel the cold chills chasing each other up and down my spine, while the roots of my hair tingled as the flesh crawled and crept on the top of my head.
Dwire alone seemed cool.
“So that’s our friend again, howling for more blood, and I guess it’s mine he’s after this time.”
“My Gawd!” shouted Kelley, “and do yez tell me ’twas a banshee that killed the Doctor?”
“Look here, fellows, and you, Kelley, get this,” snapped Dwire. “Let’s not get stampeded by some noise we can’t understand. A noise is nothing to get afraid of.
“I’m going to show you men just how this crime was committed, and no fool noise is going to scare me out. The thing we’ve all been overlooking is that it was possible for someone to have sneaked in at that window in spite of the fact that Pearce and I were watching from the porch. Moonlight is a mighty deceptive thing, particularly when it’s the light coming through a fog.
“Now I’m going to prove to you men that I’m right. The moon’s full tonight, but the clouds are heavier, and, on the whole, it’s just about the same light as we had the night of the murder. I’m going down into that room, sit in that same chair in exactly the same position the Doctor sat, and I want Kelley to keep a watch from the porch.
“Some time after ten minutes, and not later than half an hour — Pearce can, of course, choose his own time — he will sneak along the wall, just far enough away from the white surface not to be outlined against it, and I’ll bet he can enter that window without Kelley seeing him.
“I will probably be able to ‘spot’ him as he enters the window, and I’ll call out. In fact that’s just what happened when Dr. Potter was killed. He saw someone entering the window, and called to us, thinking at first it must have been either Pearce or myself. Where we all made our mistake was in thinking it was impossible for such a person to have entered through the window without our seeing him. After the murder he could have simply left the study by the door which latched and locked automatically behind him.
“Come on out on the porch and I’ll put you fellows in place.”
As the detective finished speaking, there came again, in a lower key than before, but seemingly penetrating to every corner of the house, that wailing shriek. It is impossible to describe that weird and ominous ululation. I harked back to the stories I had heard of ghouls and banshees screaming for human blood. In spite of myself I felt my blood curdle, and I am willing to swear that the hair on the top of my head actually moved.
“My God, man!” I exploded to Dwire. “Are you crazy? I don’t know what foolish theory you may have, but I’ll bet all I have that if you enter that room alone tonight and sit in the dark with that skeleton, your life won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”