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.
“I didn’t take time to investigate.”
Chuck Dean sighed heavily. “Well, I reckon we better round up Billie and that Clark fella and see what they have to say.”
“Right.”
McMain drove through the silent base and down the road to the sentry box.
“Good Lawd!” Chuck Dean exclaimed. “Look at that gate!”
The double gate was a mass of twisted steel, folded outward. The marine guard came over, uncomfortably at attention.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McMain. I stopped ’em and told ’em they couldn’t go through. They argued a little, and then the driver threw his car into gear and — blooey! — bang through the gate he went.”
“You’re a hell of a sentry!” McMain snorted. “Did you fire at the car?”
“No, sir. I was afraid I might hit Miss Dean. And I didn’t like to take the chance, sir, just because of an elopement.”
“Elopement!”
“Sure. Didn’t you know, sir? They were eloping. Miss Dean and the big guy. He told me.”
McMain viciously jerked his car into motion, shoved the gears into high, and shot down the road.
“Now what?” Chuck Dean asked.
“We have to find Clark’s car.”
McMain jammed the accelerator to the floorboard. The white ribbon of concrete, the black jungle on either side of the road, shot past at seventy miles an hour.
Suddenly Chuck Dean cried: “Hold her, Larry!”
McMain came down on his brake. “What was it?”
“Body, looked like. Back there beside the road.”
“Not—”
“No. A man. Reckon you better come about, fella.”
McMain cramped his wheel and swung the car around with its tires screaming. “Good God! This gets worse all the time. Where’d you see that body? Which side of the road?”
“My side comin’ in. Your side now. Wait! There it is. See it?”
McMain drew up at the edge of the concrete. The body of a man, crumpled as though it had been hurled from an automobile, lay in the lush grass which bordered the highway. McMain and Dean piled out of the car and, in the glow of the headlights, turned the body over.
“Clark’s chauffeur,” McMain said laconically.
“You know him?”
“I’ve seen him around.”
The man’s face was bloody and caked with mud. He had been shot. The bullet had gone into his right temple at the height of the eye, passed through his head and come out at almost the same location on the left side.
“Must have died instantly, poor devil,” McMain muttered. “Well, we’d better hit for town, report this to the police and get their help in finding Clark’s car. Come on.”
McMain had turned to the car when Dean caught him by the arm, almost jerking him off his feet.
“Good Lawd, Larry! He... he moved!”
“Nonsense. The man’s dead as a mackerel.”
“No! Wait!”
Dean dropped to his knees beside the chauffeur. He unbuttoned the man’s coat with shaking fingers. Tearing the shirt open, he dropped his ear to the bared breast. He listened for a moment, and then sat up abruptly.
“By heaven, Larry. He’s alive!”
“With a bullet through his brain?”
“I don’t give a damn,” Chuck stormed, “whether he has a bullet through his brain or not. The man’s alive and his heart is strong. And we cain’t leave the poor devil here to bleed to death.”
“Then we’ll have to take him to the sick bay at the base. I hate to waste time going back, but there’s nothing else to do. Get hold of his feet.”
The chauffeur was a slight man; they had no difficulty in lifting him into the car. Then, with Dean standing on the running-board holding the unconscious man erect, McMain drove back to the sub base and to the sick bay. There they found Doc Lucas, who, taking one look at the man, said crisply:
“It’s a miracle, but not without precedent. Carry him into the operating room.”
McMain and Dean carried him in and left him there. They were in too much of a hurry to make explanations and the doctor, for a time, was too busy to listen to them.
At police headquarters in Colón, a large and dingy room through which passed the cosmopolitan port’s nightly stream of drunks and brawlers, they found the desk sergeant.
McMain introduced Chuck and himself. “Anything new on that death at the Strangers’ Club?”
The harassed, sweating sergeant shrugged lean shoulders. “My men report, gentlemen, that the young officer took poison because a lady spurned him. A most unfortunate affair. I have ordered an autopsy performed. After that we shall hold an inquest. And then the body will be turned over to the naval authorities.”
“And meanwhile whoever killed him has plenty of time to cover his tracks.” McMain snorted.
“But the young officer killed himself,” the sergeant insisted.
“Skip it,” McMain retorted. “See here! I need your help in finding a Cad touring car. It’s painted black and the radiator is probably caved in. Know anything about it?”
“Certainly. Such a car has been found, just as you describe. It was deserted. There was blood on the front seat. It is at the entrance of Pier 4.”
McMain caught Dean by the arm and dashed into the street. “Clark keeps his yawl at Pier 4. There may be time yet to intercept them.”
“His yawl!”
“The Thelma. The boat he uses to cruise the San Blas Islands. I should have thought of it before, but I never figured he was set for such a fast getaway.”
They found the damaged car at the entrance of Pier 4. The Thelma, Clark’s trim white fifty-footer, was gone.
“He must have had her all ready to shove off,” McMain said helplessly.
“And that trip we made back to the sick bay gave him the time he needed to get away.”
The two men turned and, heavy-footed, walked slowly back to the car. Misery and bewilderment had acted like a poison on McMain’s brain. He had stopped thinking, but he couldn’t stop the round of questions that kept turning over and over in his mind.
What was the meaning of all this insanity? Why had old Pete been murdered? Why had Tommy Glade been killed? What was in the black bottle? Why did Clark shoot his chauffeur? Where did Billie tie into the picture?
“It’s a hell of a puzzle,” he remarked finally, with a slow and regretful shake of his head. “And I’m afraid the end, Chuck, won’t be pleasant. A woman, you know, doesn’t go kiting around the country with a man, burglarizing rooms for him — unless—”
“Yes,” Chuck prompted dully.
“Unless she wants to do those things,” McMain finished with an effort. “When you consider the foray those two have been on, you’ve got to admit coercion was out of the question.”
Chuck’s lips were twisted; sad-eyed, he nodded in silence.
V
Chuck Dean and McMain drove back to the submarine base in the drenching rain.
“Clark’s chauffeur may be able to tell us something,” Larry remarked after a while, and added hopelessly: “If he ever regains consciousness.”
“But not even he, prob’ly, will be able to tell us why Billie is messed up in it.”
McMain slowed for the turn at the entrance of the military reservation. He began quietly: “If she’s in love with Clark—”
“But she’s not in love with Clark,” Chuck declared.
“She’s told you?” McMain asked.
“A dozen times. She doesn’t love Clark. She didn’t love Tommy Glade. She loves you! And if you hadn’t been such a sap, you’d have known it and asked her to marry you months ago...Oh, don’t start makin’ excuses. I understand your position. You were afraid she’d turn you down, and because of your silly pride, you wouldn’t give her a chance.”