Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)
- Автор: Reeves Robert, Champion D. L.
- Год: 1942
- Язык: английский
- Год: Fictioneers
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 24, No. 9 — January, 1942)». Краткое содержание книги:
Morrie turned to Macy. “Well, that’s that. Looks like the guy was a hobo, passing through. But maybe you can catch up with him.”
Macy seemed a little disappointed. Morrie turned his paper around and pretended to read it. Macy went on asking questions but Morrie didn’t pay much attention. The first column on the front page was headed:
Nolan had been able to read that easily, from where he lay. It had certainly scared him. It meant that if he pointed the finger at Ralph as his assailant, he would also be pointing the finger at himself as a “crooked unlicensed operator.” Of course, at the time of his being knocked out he hadn’t known of any police clean-up, but these investigations were likely to bob up at any time.
Well, Nolan wouldn’t go back on his original story, no matter what happened. To do that would start something.
Macy was now busy talking to Nolan, and not getting anywhere. Morrie got up and strolled through the bathroom to Harber’s room. He had caught Harber’s eye and the weasly little stooge followed him.
Morrie pulled a wallet out of his pocket. Nolan’s.
Harber’s eyes bobbled and he muttered something.
Morrie said: “Shut up. I found this thing. You can give it to Nolan when you get a chance. Be sure you don’t snitch it. I’ll be around to check up.” Before handing the wallet to Harber, Morrie opened it and counted out six hundred dollars. He put the money in his pocket. “Tell Nolan that for a measly six hundred bucks he is now a patron of the arts.”
Morrie folded his newspaper under his arm. One thing, Nolan hadn’t been close enough to read the date-line on it. If he had, he would have known that this issue of the paper was three years old.
Morrie slept very late the next day. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before he got as far as the Diamond Grill. Myrna was just eating lunch. She saw Morrie come in. From her eyes, he thought she had been looking for him all day. She was trim and neat and fresh but her eyes were very tired.
He sat down with her at the table. “It’s all fixed,” he said. “All you and Ralph got to do is sit tight and say nothing.”
She didn’t question that. Her eyes were bright with relief now, and deep with gratitude.
She said: “How did you do it?”
“I talked to Nolan. I just appealed to his better nature.” Morrie laughed. He took out the six hundred dollars and slid it across to her under cover of a napkin. “That’s Ralph’s. Nolan is buying one of Ralph’s paintings for six hundred bucks.”
Even that, she didn’t question. Whatever Morrie said, she didn’t question. Of course she knew this must be some kind of a queer deal, but she didn’t question it. “That’s wonderful,” she said. And from the way she said it Morrie could see that she was also saying: “You are wonderful.”
Morrie thought a moment. He knew which painting he’d like, but it wouldn’t do. He said: “Have Ralph send the painting to me and I’ll see about it. Room 612 at the Apache. Send the one with the cows in the field.”
“The one with the cows in the field.” Myrna seemed to be thinking. She said: “I guess everything’s a gamble, isn’t it?”
“That’s the way I always figured,” Morrie said. He smiled. “You hear from Jim Field lately?”
The question shocked her. “Jim? Yes. This morning.”
So she’d got a letter from Jim this morning. Morrie watched her as she looked away. She’d rather not talk about Jim, rather not be forced to think about him. She was looking out of the window, out toward the west, again.
She got up and went into the kitchen to get her coat and hat. She was anxious to get home and tell Ralph. Morrie walked out to the street. He went half a block west and stopped just outside one of the gambling houses. The door was only a half-door, a cut-away door, that swung both ways. The door was light and the hinges well oiled. They always made it easy for you to push your way into a place like that, Morrie thought.
Myrna would be along in a minute, on her way home. Everything is a gamble, she had said. Sure, Morrie thought, she’d play the game with him, knowing it was a gamble. She was dead game, all right. But there was another angle, one that always counted big with him. He had always avoided gambling with people he liked. And he liked her. Liked! Well, it was a pretty weak word, but—
He could see her coming out of the cafe. Trim and fresh and eager. Like the Nevada air that was pressing in off the hills and plains into the streets of the town. She hadn’t seen him yet, but he knew her eyes were searching.
Morrie turned and pushed in through the door.
5 Shrieks at 10
by C. P. Donnel, Jr.
It was the grisliest murder the town had ever seen and the sheriff’s own nephew had been labeled “killer” and was slated to do the dangle act at the informal lynching bee the neighbors had organized. It looked like rope’s end for fair till the Doc went to work and discovered how to bottle up the mob’s conscience, the killer’s and his own.
Chapter One
Death in the Kitchen
Doc Rennie looked sour. “Women!” he snorted. His broad mouth curled in a sheepish grin as he sighted along a crutch at his bad ankle. Then his head fell back on the pillow and his blue eyes glinted in the moonlight.
Over Doc Rennie’s head Dave Tyson, my deputy, winked at me.
The Doc was low. In fact, he was horizontal. He’d driven up to Lake Inn to catch the last two days of the bass season with Dave and me. We were over at Whaleyton on a cattle case when he arrived, so to fill in the afternoon he’d let a blonde at the Inn lure him into a game of this battledore-shuttlecock foolishness called badminton.
Now he was laid out on an invalid chair he’d made the Inn people rig up on the lawn for him. Doc Rennie’s just short of six foot six, but stretched out that way the distance between his red head and the white sock over the plaster cast on his chipped ankle looked about eight foot.
Dave and I had come over to kill the evening with him and we’d been downing gin rickeys and yarning away and watching the lights of Essexville, half a mile down and across the elbow of the lake, wink out one by one.
“Women!” the Doc muttered again, waggling his head on the pillow. He was peevish, thinking of the bass he wouldn’t catch.
Bong!
The sound rolled across the water from the clock in the Methodist church tower, down in the village.
We listened. We all knew it was ten o’clock, but have you ever seen anybody who could keep from counting the strokes?
Bong!
That clock’s as deliberate as ice melting, I thought. Doc Rennie squirmed himself comfortable.
Bong!
I thought of a new story on Tiny Hinkle, our fire chief, that would amuse the Doc.
Bong!
And I’d forgotten to tell him that Hiawatha Quantrell Fillmore, editor of the Essexville Daily Farmer, was courting Julie Welch, one of the Welch twins.
Bong!
What was that sound right after the bell-stroke? Too high for a train whistle, too low for a bobcat or a...
Bong!
And there it was again, following the bell-stroke like an echo. I tensed myself against the next stroke and the sound that would come right after...
Bong!
Doc Rennie shot bolt upright in that invalid chair. There was that sound again! I stared across the water. Was it my imagination, or were lights really coming on in the outskirts of the village, up Maple Road way. I knew what the sound was now, only for the moment I was frozen to my chair.