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 walked over to the pantry and glanced inside. Pete Adams’ body had been removed and the blood mopped up. He closed the door and walked down the corridor. Passing his own room, he went on to the end of the passage and paused before Tommy Glade’s.
The key, he noted, was on the outside of the door. McMain turned the knob and stepped inside. The odor of some exotic perfume, so strong as to be almost stifling, smote his nostrils as he groped for the light switch, found it and snapped on the lights.
He heard a gasp before he saw the slim girl in the pale green dress. She was standing on the other side of the room, one hand at her breast, the other resting on a square black bottle which stood on the table in the corner. She was breathing fast and her gray eyes were frightened.
“What in hell!” McMain cried.
Billie dropped her gaze, but did not speak.
The lieutenant glanced around swiftly. Save for a heavy trunk which stood beside the bed, a few toilet articles on the chiffonier, the room was bare of Tommy’s belongings.
McMain looked back at Billie. “For God’s sake, girl, what’s this all about? You rush away from the club the instant you hear Tommy’s dead. You tear out here with Clark. And now I find you rifling Tommy’s room. Are you, by any chance, a Secret Service operative, too?”
Her laugh was forced. “No, I’m just a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary.” The attempt at humor was flat; humor was out of tune with the tragedy in her eyes.
McMain sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Oh, hell!” he groaned. “Let’s not try to be funny. What are you doing here, Billie?”
She came towards him, carrying the black bottle in her right hand. Pausing at the foot of the bed, she pleaded:
“Won’t you please not ask me that question? Won’t you please let me go away from here and forget you ever saw me?”
“You know I can’t do that,” McMain said unhappily.
She met his eyes and then looked away. “And two weeks ago, that night drivin’ home from the club, you told me you loved me.”
“You’re not being fair, Billie. Whether or not I love you doesn’t enter this mess at all. Two men have been murdered tonight and—”
“Two!” the girl cried.
“We found Pete Adams in the pantry a while ago with his throat cut.”
“Pete Adams!”
“Our old wardroom steward.”
“Yes, I know.” She stood there staring at him, her lips parted, her shining dark hair wind-blown and awry.
“What, precisely, do you know?” McMain asked gently.
“I know it all fits.”
“What fits?”
“Don’t you know?” Billie countered.
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Can you tell me?” His voice was mild, patient. “Can you tell me why Pete’s throat was cut? Can you tell me why that fine young officer was murdered? And how?”
“Tommy,” she said, her voice trembling, “killed himself.”
“How?”
“I... I think — he drank poison.”
“Tommy Glade?” McMain shook his head. “No. Tommy Glade was a man. If he wanted to go out, he’d choose a man’s way. He wouldn’t drink poison at the Strangers’ Club. He’d come here to his room and blow his brains out with a service .45.”
“Don’t! Don’t!” Billie begged.
McMain tried a new tack. “Is that alleged Secret Service man waiting for you outside? Around the corner of the building where I didn’t see him when I drove up?”
“Mr. Clark brought me over and then went back to town,” Billie answered quickly — too quickly.
“And you had time, after he brought you home, to walk over here?” he asked skeptically. When he received no answer his eyes shifted to the square bottle. “What have you there?”
“A bottle of perfume.”
“The perfume that’s so rank in this room?”
“Yes.”
“Then you opened it?”
“Yes.”
McMain saw that the glass stopper was sealed with a heavy coating of wax. “Then how did you seal it up again? And why?”
She lifted the black bottle, staring in surprise at the wax around its neck.
McMain did not wait for an answer to his questions. His voice, now, was not so gentle. He was prodding himself, forcing himself to be hard. “Why did you open it in the first place?...Did you sprinkle it around the room?...If you did, why?”
The girl breathed heavily; her eyes were like a cornered animal’s. She screamed suddenly:
“Please! Let me alone! I won’t listen to you any longer. I won’t answer your questions. I won’t!”
Her eyes met his for a brief moment. Then, before he realized her intention, she had leaped towards him. Her open left hand, the whole weight of her body behind it, struck him in the face and bowled him over backwards on the bed.
By the time he gained his balance and got to his feet, the door was slamming behind her. He heard the lock snap home and then the patter of her footsteps running down the passageway.
A hurt, regretful smile twisted his lips. Then, with a quiet shrug, he switched off the lights and went to the window. He heard the outer door of the wardroom slam and a moment later the low purr of a powerful car.
Not until then did he release the screen and hop over the sill. Running around the building, he was just in time to see Clark’s black touring car swing onto the concrete of the base’s main street, heading towards Colón. McMain went back into the wardroom, picked up the telephone and called the sentry box at the gate.
“Lieutenant McMain speaking. That big Cad with Miss Dean is on its way up. Stop it. Close your gates and stop it if you have to use your rifle. Got that?”
“I got it, sir.”
McMain put the telephone back on the stand. He was still smiling that twisted, regretful smile, but with his lips alone. His dark eyes were hard.
IV
McMain went out to his car and drove to the Deans’ quarters. He found Chuck Dean, his wife and the Mayers in a bridge game. He greeted them, said briefly:
“Sorry to break up your game, but I’ll have to see you for a few minutes, Chuck.”
Chuck, a lanky, blond six-footer, rose from the table. He got his cap and followed McMain out of the house, down the stairs and to the small roadster.
“What’s it all about, Larry? Pete Adams?”
“That’s the beginning of it,” McMain acknowledged, and briefly sketched the night’s events.
“Good Lawd, I cain’t understand it!” Chuck Dean said dazedly at last. “Billie has always been adventurous, reckless you might say, but getting involved in a thing like this — Why do you suppose she wanted that bottle of perfume? She must have got it for Clark. But why didn’t he do his own dirty work?”
“He’d need her with him to get onto the base after nine o’clock.”
“But after he was here, why didn’t he drop her at home and go back to the wardroom himself? Why did he have to drag her into this?”
McMain said quietly: “Chuck, she was in it already.”
“My sister?” Chuck raged. Then he caught himself, asked more calmly: “You say this fellow is a Secret Service man?”
“Billie believes he is and he doesn’t deny it. Personally, I think he started the rumor himself as a blind.”
Chuck thought about that for a moment or two, while he nervously coiled and uncoiled his long legs. “And Tommy’s room, you say, was rank with perfume?”
“Terrible. And yet the cork wasn’t out of the bottle.”
“Then where did the smell of perfume come from?”