The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
Arnison choked. “You want me to lure Egan here? My God, guy, you don’t know what you’re askin’!”
Duke squinted along the barrel of his gun. “Have you ever seen what happens when they take you to the morgue, Tubby? How they rip you open down the middle, stick a water-hose into you to wash out your insides? If I shoot you in the head, for instance, they’ll cut off your skull to see where the bullet went. They’ll—”
“Cut it!” screamed the gunman. “Cut it, I tell you!”
“There’s the phone, Tubby,” Duke suggested drily.
Arnison inched toward the instrument on his stomach. His tremulous fingers fumbled with the receiver as he sought to remove it.
“Easy, Tubby, easy,” cautioned Martindel. “I’ll hold you responsible if Egan doesn’t show up, so don’t let him smell a rat.”
Arnison sobbed aloud, shuddered convulsively, then took down the receiver. In broken sentences he jerked out the number of headquarters, but by the time he got the inspector on the wire, his voice was reasonably cool.
“Arnison, chief. I don’t want to talk over the phone, see, but can you come up here right away?” He shot a sidelong glance at Duke, then shut his eyes as though to blot out the vision of the gun muzzle. “We — Nagel got him, chief, but you better come. I found somethin’, see. I... yeah, we’re up in a cottage on Bear Mountain.” He choked out the directions for reaching the cabin, then slowly cradled the receiver.
Duke grinned cynically. “He’s coming?”
Arnison shuddered. “He’s comin’!” he sobbed and dropped his head in his arms.
When the noise of a car reached the cabin about a half hour later, the stage was set. Duke Martindel stood back of the entrance door, leaning on the top of a chair. Tubby Arnison, still trembling with terror, crouched on another straight-backed chair beside the center table, facing the front door. Brakes ground outside, then the motor died. A car door slammed.
Arnison mumbled something. Duke wagged the gun. “Easy, Tubby,” he whispered. “Easy.”
Steps pounded up across the veranda, paused a moment, then the door swung open. Egan strode into the room.
“Well, Arnison, where is he?” demanded the inspector. Duke reached out and slapped the door shut with his free hand. “Right here, Egan! No, don’t reach for that gun. You can’t make it!”
The uniformed man swiveled like a cornered hobo. For a brief instant he seemed undecided whether to go for his gun, then he slowly elevated his hands.
“What is this?” he snapped.
“This,” Duke told him drily, “is a showdown. Arnison here has been telling me some interesting things, Inspector, things that corroborate some old-time suspicions of mine.”
Egan flashed a venomous glance at the quaking stoolie, then turned back to Martindel. “You’re a damn fool, Duke!” he commented. “Put down that gun!”
“You’re right, Egan, I am a damn fool,” Duke admitted. “But I’m not going to put down this gun until we settle a few points of interest. First, I’d like to know what excuse you have for putting a couple of hoods on me!”
Egan shrugged. “You’re crazy. You can’t prove a thing.”
“Who said anything about proving it? I’m curious, that’s all, damn curious. For instance, I’m curious to know how it happened that Harry Washburn was murdered at the exact moment that Skuro and Nuene were cracking the County and Suburban Bank, how you appeared at the bank just as I was leaving.” His mocking smile vanished into a scowl. “And, lastly, Egan, I’d like to know why you deliberately shot at my head.”
“We don’t take bank robbers alive,” growled Egan, “not after they kill a watchman.”
Duke sniffed. “But you weren’t supposed to know that Foy was dead when you walked in there. That’s another point I’d like cleared up, Egan — the killing of Foy. Sam and Gus didn’t kill him, I didn’t, so who did?”
“You can’t talk your way out of this mess,” Egan threatened.
Duke grinned sardonically. “I’m not going to do the talking, Inspector. Tubby here, for instance, knows a lot of interesting things.”
Egan ponderously swung his head. Arnison winced before the cold glitter of those colorless eyes. “S’help me, chief, I ain’t—” he choked to a stop.
Duke hefted his gun. “Well, Tubby, make up your mind. Don’t be bashful — this is a nice, chummy get-together. Now what do you know about this business?”
Arnison pulled himself erect, his fingers tightened around the back of his chair. “My God, you wouldn’t murder a man in cold blood?”
“Don’t be a fool!” rasped Egan. “He’s bluffing you.”
Duke smiled, but said nothing. His thumb dragged back the hammer of his revolver and in the silence of the dusty room, two distinct clicks were audible. Arnison’s voice rose to a shriek.
“Bluffin’ hell! I ain’t gonna die, I ain’t, I tell ya.”
Martindel had hoped to provoke an argument between his two captives and thus glean some of the truth back of the tangled mess. He well knew Egan’s vicious temper and he counted on Arnison’s fear of death to form a verbal explosion of some sort. But he was hardly prepared for what followed.
Arnison was trembling from head to foot. “You got me into this, Egan!” he shrilled. “He’ll shoot me down like a dog. I won’t die — s’help me, I won’t, I tell ya—”
Duke swung his eyes to Egan to see how the latter was taking it, when Arnison flung the chair!
With one leg injured and unable to bear his weight, Duke had propped himself against the chair in front of him. Arnison’s wild fling struck the chair, knocked it from under him and he fell headlong to the floor. As he went down, he tried to swing his gun, but Egan kicked it from his hand and it bounced across the room.
Duke cursed his own carelessness, rolled over and tried to drag himself erect. Then he paused. He saw Arnison swing and pounce toward the revolver. Just as the crook reached it, a gun roared. Arnison gave a startled yelp, pirouetted once and sprawled in a corner.
Duke jerked his eyes away, brought them back to Egan. The inspector was lowering his own service revolver and a faint dribble of smoke curled from the muzzle.
“There goes a perfectly good witness,” Duke drawled cynically.
Egan turned. “You won’t need any witnesses,” he growled. “Not where you’re going.”
Duke gave up trying to pull himself to his feet. He sat back on the floor and looked into the relentless features of the policeman. “So it’s like that, Egan?”
The inspector nodded. “Just like that.” He stepped sideways so that he could get a clear, unobstructed shot at the man on the floor.
Duke sighed. “Just one question. Why was I framed on that bank job?”
Egan drew back the hammer of his gun. “You can ask Arnison that when you meet him in hell.”
Abruptly a gun thundered into the silence. Duke’s first impression was that Egan had fired. The inspector stood with his arm still outstretched, but now his gun had vanished and his hand was dripping blood.
Duke called on his waning strength to drag himself erect. He jerked around to face the hoodlum, but Arnison still lay inert where he had fallen.
Then a door opened and Captain Dombey and Phyllis came into the room. Dombey covered Egan. Phyllis gave a little whimper and ran toward Duke, arms outstretched. He swayed forward to meet her. The floor rose suddenly. He went out.
Duke recovered consciousness in the hospital to find Phyllis sitting on the edge of the bed, holding his hand. “Take it easy, darling,” she whispered, and he saw that she smiled through her tears.