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.
Both bullets, fired at point-blank from heavy calibre revolvers, arrested the flying figure in midair, just as it was about to descend on Dwire, hurled it back and to the floor, where it fell with a human and solid thud.
By that time I had recovered my sluggish wits, and was racing for the switch, and flooded the room with lights.
Lying still on the floor, with a widening pool of blood spreading over the black robes which covered it, lay a very substantial figure. The skeleton of Elbert Crothers hung, swinging from the closet door.
Dwire, seemingly as cool as though performing an act of ordinary routine, raised the black robe from the still figure of Kimi, who had been instantly killed by a bullet in the forehead.
“I am sorry to have to prove to you that a trusted servant, and a professed friend, has been false,” said Dwire, turning to me, “but I received evidence in San Francisco which pointed to Kimi as a spy in the employ of interests adverse both to Dr. Potter and our national government. I had made a secret search of his rooms before I left, and found data which gave me the first real clue, including the fact that, in his younger days, in Japan, the Doctor had deserted a native wife, who proved to be Kimi’s sister.
“An examination of the cellar showed where he had constructed a cunningly arranged passage through the floor of the closet. You will find a phosphorescent skeleton painted upon the black robe which he wore. The rest was simple. He entered the closet through the trapdoor, moved the skeleton about a bit, stepped in front of it and with his back to the chair thereby concealing the phosphorescent skeleton painted on the robe he wore, and also concealing the bones for a moment, then by the simple expedient of turning around was able to present the spectacle of a glowing skeleton which had just stepped down from the closet door. His victim would ordinarily be paralyzed with shock, and it would be a simple matter to stab him before he could make a move.
“Kimi was an electrical engineer, which explains his interest in Professor Kennedy’s apparatus, and will probably explain the mysterious sounds. He found Phillips, who wrote to us as Jorgensen, found out he was a spiritist, and through a corrupt medium led him to write the note he did, and to make a nocturnal visit to the house the night of the murder.
“Kimi had tried to steal the knowledge of a new and terrific war gas the Doctor had developed. Failing in that he resolved to murder him, both for his secret and to avenge his sister. When he learned that I was hot on the trail, he decided to work the scheme again and dispose of me, particularly after overhearing our talk in the living-room. You will find Professor Kennedy is the harmless scientist he appears to be, and that Dawley is just a fresh young hoodlum, who planned to take the Doctor’s car to meet some lady friend.”
A subsequent investigation proved Dwire correct in every detail. A modification of an electric automobile siren was found imbedded in the door of the closet directly behind the mouth of the skeleton, and a system of wires made it possible to work this siren from several parts of the house. The length of time the contact was maintained varied the volume and pitch of the noise.
Professor Kennedy, locked in his laboratory, and with his mind on his abstract, scientific problems, had worked through the evening, hearing neither the wails of the siren, nor the revolver shots.
The Santa Delbara police took charge of the situation and it was hushed up with as little publicity as possible, owing to the fact that a war secret was involved.
Since I have been in possession of the house, regardless of the elimination of the supernatural aspect of the case, I have had it completely remodeled, and you may be sure the skeleton of Elbert Crothers no longer hangs in the study. Spirits or not, I have never been able to rid my mind of the impression that my friend and benefactor in some way attracted to himself the events which led to his tragic death, by bringing the skeleton of his ancient enemy to hang on the door of his study closet.
Drop Dead Twice
Hank Searls
Henry Hunt Searls JR. (1922–) received his B.S. from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, then attended the Stanford University Publishing Course. His background in the navy (he is now a retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve), plus his avocation of yachting, provided authentic background to his many novels with military backgrounds, not to mention his novelizations of the movies Jaws 2 (1978) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). He had a long history of writing for the pulps, notably the series about San Francisco private eye Mike Blair, which appeared in Dime Detective in the 1940s and early 1950s; seven Blair adventures were collected in The Adventures of Mike Blair (1988). Searls has written of his inexperience when he began writing, learning his craft while earning a penny a word from the pulps, which served him well when he began to write full-length novels, frequently military thrillers, such as The Crowded Sky (1960), which was filmed the same year with Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and Anne Francis; The Pilgrim Project (1964), filmed by Robert Altman as Countdown (1968), starring James Caan, Joanna Moore, and Robert Duvall; The Penetrators (1965); and the TV movie Overboard (1978) with Angie Dickinson. Among Searls’s other TV writing credits are episodes of The Fugitive, the miniseries Wheels, and the creation of The New Breed, which starred Leslie Nielsen.
“Drop Dead Twice” was published in the March 1950 issue.
When a lady dabbles in blackmail, she’s begging for a shroud — and so is the private dick who goes calling on her corpse!
It was a very nice job — definitely professional. And final. The blonde lay across the hotel bed lengthwise, a gleam of golden flesh showing above her stocking, but otherwise perfectly presentable. A white linen handkerchief was clutched in her hand. She had been mugged — strangled — throttled. Whatever you wanted to call it, the killer had quite thoroughly known his business.
It was no place for me. The package in my pocket was suddenly heavy. I lit a cigarette and did some fast thinking. The more I thought the worse it looked. The desk clerk had taken my name, phoned the room. The blonde had apparently answered the phone and told him to send me up. One short elevator ride later I had walked through the open door, called her name, and gone into the bedroom.
And she was dead.
What do you do when you find a corpse? In the movies, you call the cops. The cops come and they want to know what you’re doing there. You can’t explain. So they stick you in the clink, and you stay, innocent as a new-born babe, until some smart dick solves the crime. Then they spring you and everybody lives happily ever after.
But suppose nobody solves the crime?
Maybe you burn. Maybe they adjust that last, uncomfortable necktie and spring the trapdoor. No, this is California. They put you in a quiet private room with a bottle of cyanide gas and tell you to breathe deep.
Not me.
I flicked the cigarette out the window and took a powder...
Lippy Fargo adjusted his expensive bathrobe over his fat little belly and showed me into his apartment. He motioned to a chair in front of the big window and went to the bar.
“Whiskey, Pete?”
“A shot.”
He waddled back with two glasses and plopped himself down opposite me.
“Did you give the stuff to her?”
I took the package out of my pocket and untied it. I removed four five-hundred-dollar bills and tossed the package to Lippy. I said: “The two grand is for services rendered. Cheap, considering.”