Black Mask (Vol. 21, No. 8 — November, 1938)
- Автор: Баллард Уиллис Тодхантер, Cave Hugh B.
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: Pro-Distributors Publishing
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask (Vol. 21, No. 8 — November, 1938)». Краткое содержание книги:
Lennox crept forward in the shadows. His voice was tight. “You’re all through, Morgan. Get your hands in the air!”
Butcher Morgan cursed savagely. “Lennox!” Flame lanced out from his side. A bullet struck the superstructure close to Bill’s head and whined down the deck as it ricochetted.
The gun in Lennox’s hand belched twice. There was a cry from Morgan, a short, sharp sound as he staggered backward. The ship’s rail struck him just above the knee. He hesitated for an instant, then his body plunged over. There was a splash, lost in the pound of gunfire as both Rodriguez and Farnero drove shots into the darkness. Lennox dropped flat on the deck as the bullets pinged against the steel plates. A slug screamed down at an angle past his head and tore through the fleshy part of his leg.
He steadied himself, gritting his teeth against the pain and fired in return. There was a grunt and the General slipped to the deck. Lennox squeezed his trigger again, heard the pin strike on an empty cylinder. He reared upright as Farnero, seeming to sense that Lennox’s gun was empty, jumped forward.
Lennox heaved the useless automatic directly into the face of the charging man, then jumped. But his wounded leg hampered him. His fingertips barely grazed Farnero as he went down. He fell heavily to the deck, lay for an instant not moving. He could see Farnero above him in the uncertain light, saw the man’s lips twist wolfishly.
“You’ve been asking for this, Lennox.” The automatic steadied.
Nancy Hobbs said from the right, “Drop that gun, Art!”
With an oath, Farnero pivoted, snapping a shot toward the direction of her voice. Lennox heaved himself forward, his arms locked about Farnero’s knees, dropped the man to the deck with a clean tackle.
Farnero twisted, trying to bring his gun up against Bill’s side. Lennox rolled over, caught the man’s wrist with his right hand, fighting desperately for possession of the gun. Someone was standing over him, battering the back of Bill’s head with a leather purse. It was Rita, swearing at him in Spanish. The swinging purse stopped suddenly. Lennox heard Nancy’s voice, realized that Nancy had dragged Rita back. Then all his attention was centered on the gun, and the man beneath him.
They struggled without sound. Lennox’s lungs seemed to be bursting, then suddenly Farnero weakened. The gun came around quickly, exploded. There was a convulsive jerk in Farnero’s body, then he was still.
Lennox rose slowly, a little dazed. As he came to his feet he saw Rita break free from Nancy, swing her purse at the fan writer’s head, turn and dash toward the rail, but she never reached it.
The harbor police were coming over the side; a flashlight cut through the gloom. With a choking cry Rita spun and raced toward the bow of the ship.
A gun spoke from the darkness at the rail. She threw up her hands and fell forward onto her face.
The harbor police were around Nancy and Lennox. One of them walked forward and turned his lamp on Rita. Bill heard him swear, saw him wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jeeze! A woman! And I shot her!”
Everything was confusion; everyone was asking questions. The lieutenant in charge said, “But what were they — smugglers? What were they hauling on the boat?”
Lennox said, “They were revolutionists. They were hauling an arsenal.” He limped over to the open hatch and pointed down.
The lieutenant stared at the stacked cases. “Where in hell did all those guns come from?”
Lennox said, “Mobster guns — probably the largest collection of gang weapons ever made in United States. Morgan’s been gathering them for a long time.” He turned and went back to Nancy.
The girl was standing quietly at the head of the companionway. He told her, a little hoarsely, “I’m sorry about Frank.”
She didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.
The police helped them down the ladder into the boat. Lennox looked back at the dark ship. A lot of plans had gone haywire that night. There wouldn’t be a revolution below the Line. And suddenly he remembered the picture.
He’d have to call Spurck — tell him that Frank Hobbs was dead. He knew of a lot easier jobs than that, but it had to be done.
Curtain Call
by Hugh B. Cave
Suicide or murder? This cop plays out his strange hunch mercilessly.
“The trouble with you,” I said, glaring at Jojo Evans, “you think everything connected with the detecting business is funny. You’re like a lot of guys that write these dumb detective stories. Murder is just something to crack wise about.”
I felt that way. It could have been the rain, and most likely part of it was but, whatever the reason or the excuse, I was in a mood that morning to bite the head off a rattlesnake. And it didn’t help to have Percy Joseph Evans sitting there with his feet on my desk, kidding me about my attentions to a corpse.
I’m dumb. I admit it. Any other dick on the force would have taken one look at that corpse and scribbled “suicide” down in his hip-pocket notebook; but yours truly, Thompson the Trouble Seeker, had to stand right up in public and call it murder.
Why? Because it should have been murder. This guy Vanetti had been begging for it.
Only it wasn’t. Or was it?
I walked into the private sanctum of
W. J. Reynolds, my boss, and said morbidly: “You sent for me, Chief?” He scowled at me.
“Close the door, Thompson.”
“Sure.” I closed it.
“Sit down.”
“Sure.” I sat. Two other men were sitting, too, and both gave me a good looking-at. One was Detective Inspector Bill Donahue; the other was Mr. Nick Lomac. Putting those two together in the same room was like parking St. Peter alongside the devil’s number one furnace stoker. Bill Donahue was big, gray at the temples, middle-aged and honest. Nick Lomac was small, slim, black-haired and vicious. A politician.
The Chief narrowed his gray eyes at me and pulled a scowl across his mouth. He was a good man, Reynolds. He’d been around a long time and without him Kolb City would have been a heap crookeder than it was.
He said, “The papers have printed a statement by you, Thompson, about the death of Leon Vanetti. An unauthorized statement and a most embarrassing one. Perhaps you can explain?”
“You know these newspaper reporters as well as I do,” I muttered.
“Meaning?”
“I spoke out of turn and some squirt scribbled it down.”
“Then you don’t actually believe Vanetti was murdered?”
“Listen,” I said, hauling in a breath because it was going to take a bit of time. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I was around here last night with Joe Evans, waiting for curfew, when this call came in from the joint where Vanetti had a room. I took the call myself. It was Vanetti’s landlady.
“She was in a lather about something, but she talks with a spaghetti accent and it took me at least five minutes to unravel the spaghetti. What she was trying to tell me was this: Some woman telephoned and wanted to speak with Vanetti. So Mrs. Fretas, the landlady, hoofed upstairs to Vanetti’s room and knocked, and got no answer. She figured he must be asleep, because she herself’d been sitting out on the front steps when he came in an hour ago, and he hadn’t gone out again since. So she knocked again.”
I was deliberately dragging it out, not to hear myself talk but to see what the story would do to Nick Lomac. Apparently it did nothing. Lomac sat there with indifference warped all over his swarthy face and listened to me. The way you’d listen to a Sunday morning sermon after being out on a binge the night before.