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.
McMain frowned. “Odd thing for him to do. He’s quick on the trigger, all right, but I never knew him to quarrel with a servant. And speaking of servants, how about joining me in a drink?”
“An excellent idea.” Doc Lucas racked his cue and waddled around the table. “I’ll ring for Pete.”
He touched the button on the wall and then came over and sat down beside McMain. Short and pot-bellied, the sixty-year-old medical officer was a sharp contrast to the tall vigorous submarine commander who sat beside him.
McMain leaned back in his chair and tried to relax. A long day in the sub’s engine room had left him exhausted, his nerves on edge.
He thought of Billie Dean, cool, fresh and youthful, dancing the night away at the Strangers’ Club.
He thought of Benson Clark, handsome, wealthy, dangerous enough to be enchanting to a kid like Billie Dean.
And he thought of Tommy Glade. It wasn’t like Tommy to jump on poor Pete Adams, the old wardroom steward.
Again thunder rolled, banging across the sub base. McMain’s head jerked.
“You’re the last man in the world,” Doc remarked very casually, “I’d expect to develop nerves.”
McMain shrugged, grunted: “Until tonight I never knew the meaning of nerves. But tonight — Well, it’s something I can’t put a name to. A tension in the air. But where the devil is Pete?”
“I’ll ring again.”
Doc Lucas rose and stepped to the button. McMain glanced irritably towards the pantry, and felt his hair stand on end. He was out of his chair in a flash. He caught Doc’s arm, whirled him around. He pointed to a shining dark stain on the bare floor next to the pantry door.
“Doc!” he gasped. “That’s blood!”
The doctor took a slow deep breath and said calmly: “It certainly looks like blood, Larry.”
McMain strode to the pantry and pushed the door. It jammed against something. He threw his shoulder against it and hurled it wide.
“Good Lord, Doc! Look!”
Old Pete Adams lay sprawled face downward on the floor of the little cubby. The negro’s white uniform was soaked with blood, which had spread in a wide pool across the floor and under the wardroom door.
Doc Lucas, business-like and outwardly unmoved, bent down and turned the old man on his back. The eyes were wide open, the pupils rolled back until only the whites were visible. Set deeply in the black, contorted face, they were awesome and horrible. The throat had been slit from ear to ear by a long butcher knife which lay beside the body.
Doc Lucas slowly backed from the pantry and stood for a moment looking down at the lifeless old steward.
“I’ve seen him slice bread with that knife. It has an edge like a razor. Well, Larry” — the doctor’s voice became brisker — “this is a matter for the commandant. Close the pantry, will you?”
McMain pulled the door shut and, turning, saw that Doc Lucas had sat down at the telephone stand.
“Wait a minute, Doc!” he blurted. “Look here! You mentioned an argument between Pete and Tommy Glade.”
Doc Lucas nodded placidly.
“When was it?” McMain demanded.
“Oh, perhaps half an hour ago.”
“What were they quarreling about?”
“I don’t know. I was on the other side of the room here, practicing billiards.”
McMain’s dark eyes were bleak. “Doc, have you got the idea that Tommy Glade killed that poor devil?”
“It looks that way,” the doctor calmly admitted.
McMain, glaring, took a step towards the round little man. “Doc, you’re crazy!” he snapped. “Tommy Glade has been under my command for six years. I never knew a finer—”
“Now see here, Larry,” Doc Lucas interrupted. “I haven’t been out of this room for two hours. The last person to go into the pantry was Tommy Glade, and I tell you frankly he had blood in his eye. The last person to see Pete Adams alive was, so far as I know, Tommy Glade.
“Stop and think a minute. The lone window in the pantry is screened and perhaps you noticed that the screen hasn’t been cut or tampered with. There is no other entrance but that door. Now! If Tommy Glade didn’t kill old Pete—” Doc Lucas paused pointedly...“Well?”
“Pete killed himself.”
“Exactly. One or the other. Now I’ll have to phone the commandant.”
The doctor picked up the telephone. McMain stood indecisively for a moment. Then he turned and hurried into the passageway and down it to his own quarters. Feverishly throwing off his clothes, he took a quick shower. Within five minutes, dressed now in neat and freshly pressed linen cits, he was back in the wardroom.
“I’m going ashore,” he said crisply.
The doctor shrugged. “Suit yourself. Personally, I think you ought to keep out of it. There is something, Larry, damned peculiar about this whole affair. I sensed it first tonight when we were talking about Tommy Glade, and this Benson Clark fellow and Billie Dean.”
“Oh, yes? Why drag Billie into it? Or Clark, for that matter?”
Doc Lucas smiled gently. “Or Tommy. Well, call it a hunch.”
McMain turned towards the outer door. Then he stopped and again faced the doctor. “What did you tell the Old Man?”
“I didn’t get him. He’s at some affair in Balboa. I notified the executive officer and he’s on his way over here. We’ll take care of the body.”
“Chuck Dean is acting exec.”
“I know. Billie’s brother. What of it?”
“Look here!” McMain took a nervous step or two towards the doctor. “How about soft-pedaling this quarrel between Tommy Glade and Pete? Why spill it to Chuck? Why not wait till the skipper gets back? Better yet, wait till tomorrow. You can’t do much tonight, anyway. And maybe after I’ve seen Tommy, we’ll have some sort of a lead.” McMain paused, breathless. “Well, how about it?”
Doc Lucas, his eyes half closed, asked slowly: “Are you taking the responsibility for investigating this murder?”
“Isn’t it my duty, as senior line officer quartered in the wardroom?”
“I imagine it is,” Doc Lucas said thoughtfully. “I imagine, in a case of this sort, a line officer ranks a staff officer.”
“Do you want the job?” McMain asked flatly.
“I do not.”
“Very well. Then leave it in my hands.”
McMain strode out of the wardroom into the humid, oppressive night. Walking around the building to the officers’ garage, where he kept his car, he regretted that he had been so downright short to Doc Lucas. He was too keyed up, however, to worry about it.
Where would this thing lead? Tommy Glade implicated in the murder of an obscure wardroom servant? That was nonsense!
Billie Dean involved? And Benson Clark? Absurd! The only possible connection was in his own mind, in associating Glade with Billie and Clark.
II
McMain parked his car in the driveway in front of the Strangers’ Club and climbed the stairs to the hall on the second floor. A dance had just ended. He singled out Billie Dean and Benson Clark almost immediately. They were walking towards a table in the dimness of the far corner. Tommy Glade, the lieutenant reflected, would not be far away.
McMain strolled over to their table. There were three empty glasses on it. Three! Where was Tommy Glade?
“Good evening, Billie,” he said. “How are you, Clark?”
Billie’s eyes lighted as she smiled at him. “Hello, Larry. You’re lookin’ warm. Been dancin’?”
Her low-pitched, lazy Southern drawl was as calming and caressing as a cool breeze.
“No, I just got here.”
Clark had risen, but he did not offer his hand. He was a tall, muscular man of thirty-five; he carried himself, he moved, with a studied grace and poise. His blond hair was brushed back from his high forehead in a nice wave. With his strong, cleft chin, his regular features, he was just a bit too handsome to be human.