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.
Irene ran to the edge of the trap. She flashed a torch into the black pit. The detective was on his feet now, groping for the torch he had dropped in falling.
The dark shape of Le Loup appeared suddenly in the zone of light. Irene switched off the torch and left them in darkness. A red glow flashed from the tunnel three times and the floor rocked with the concussion of shots. Irene heard a sharp scream that did not come from Le Loup. She knew then that the Apache’s knife had found its mark in the dark. “Papa! Papa!” she cried hysterically.
The killer of her father was dead! But Irene was reminded suddenly of the second object of her vengeance. She ran forward to the short lever that controlled the trapdoor. Her moment of ecstasy over Duret’s scream had cost her dear. The lever stuck in her hands when the trap was half closed. Irene threw her weight wildly against the iron bar. A gasp of exhaustion escaped her lips. Suddenly the lever moved freely. Irene jammed it home with a cry of exhaltation. And then she heard the mocking laugh of Le Loup at her side.
His right arm wound around Irene’s side, binding her arms as he drew her against his body with the strength of a boa constrictor. Le Loup’s left hand manipulated the trap lever. He turned swiftly, raised Irene in his two arms and tossed her into the tunnel.
Irene struck hard on the tunnel floor. She lay stunned for an instant but came to quickly with Le Loup’s mad laughter in her ears. She looked up and light dazzled her eyes. Le Loup had found the flashlight Irene had dropped. Irene was conscious of a writhing movement at her feet. She glanced down and saw Duret clutching at a knife that was buried in his thigh. The knife came from the wound and Le Loup backed from the edge of the trap. The detective arose on one knee.
Irene saw the head and shoulders of Le Loup as he bent over the lever to close the trap. She screamed and grasped frantically at the edge of the lifting door. The trap was closing. With horror in her heart Irene saw she would be pinned by her hands between the closed trap and the cellar floor. She released her hold and dropped back into the tunnel. As she fell a faint breath of air struck her gently on the cheek. Something that gleamed bright whizzed past her head. Scream after scream came from Le Loup above. Then the trapdoor dropped. The tunnel was in utter darkness and the cries from Le Loup came faintly as from a great distance.
Irene stood listening. Slowly the cries of Le Loup receded into silence. Irene could see nothing. But now she could hear the sharp squealing of many rats.
“Duret! Duret! You killed him?”
The detective did not answer.
Panic seized Irene and she crawled about the tunnel groping for the detective. Her hand struck something and she heard a soft moan.
“Duret! Duret!”
She wondered fearfully if the detective were dead. Her hands went into his pockets and at last found a box of matches. She struck one and looked into the detective’s face. He was ghastly in the wan light of the match. She clutched at his wrist and cried out her joy when she felt the beat of life. The match end burnt her fingers and she struck another. Off to one side Irene caught a gleam of nickel. She reached out and found the flashlight the detective had dropped.
Irene switched on the light and looked at the detective’s leg. She ripped off lengths of her skirt and fastened a tourniquet above the wound. Then she bound the wound itself. She worked over the detective with frenzied solicitude. The ironic thought that this was the man she had sought to kill did not cross her mind. She knew only that she was in terror of being alone. When she had bound Duret’s wound, Irene sat down beside him.
She thought of the flashlight battery. That must be conserved.
Hours later, it seemed, Duret recovered consciousness and asked for water. Irene recalled him to their predicament.
The detective looked at her strangely, but said nothing. He ran a hand to his bandaged leg and looked more mystified than before. “Tell me,” he said at last, “is there a way to raise the trap from below?”
Irene shook her head hopelessly. “No. The trap can be worked only from above. Once open, it may be set to close itself, but there is no way to raise it. One of my... my lodgers told me that arrangement was a precaution against thieves or an enemy getting into the tunnel. The tunnel is as old as Montreal. Most of it has been blocked up and built over. I suppose there was once some central place where the trap could be worked from below. I have never been down here before, but I understand there is only a small section of the tunnel now in existence.”
“Then come,” Duret said, “we will investigate. I can walk on one foot if you will permit me to lean a little upon your shoulder.”
They moved slowly down the littered passage. Rats scuttled beyond the range of their flashlight. As the light advanced, the squealing of the rats increased. Then in a few more minutes, they heard no more of the rats and the tunnel ended abruptly against a cement wall.
Duret stood in deep thought. “The rats have gone,” he said slowly. “And they did not pass through this wall of cement!”
The detective lowered himself to the ground and crawled back along the tunnel, examining the walls. The rats had dug many galleries, but they were nothing more than black holes.
He was nearly halfway back to the trapdoor beneath the stone house when he shouted to Irene.
She ran forward and dropped to her knees beside him.
“Look!” he cried.
Irene peered through a rat hole and saw twilight ahead. The detective put his mouth to the hole and shouted for help. He called until he was exhausted. But there was no answering cry from the world beyond.
Irene drew the detective aside. “It is nearly night,” she said, “there is no one about these streets. It can be only a short distance. I can dig.”
Irene went to work on the wall with her stiletto. The earth flew back from the rapid knife thrusts, but it was tedious work and at the end of an hour, though her fingers were raw from tearing away the loosened earth, she had progressed only a short distance.
Duret lapsed into unconsciousness after his violent shouting for help and Irene toiled on alone. She stopped from time to time for a brief rest, and during one of these intervals tightened the tourniquet and replaced the sodden bandage on Duret’s leg.
At last the wall before her crumbled and the dislodged earth fell outward. A great rush of fresh air nearly overwhelmed Irene. She widened the opening quickly and crawled through.
The sky was lightening in the east and Irene saw that she was in the excavation for a new building that was being erected two blocks from the house on St. Amable Street.
She was free. And with her safety her mind recalled the motive that had led up to this adventure in the tunnel. The primitive tourniquet and bandage she had wrapped around Duret’s wound would not stanch the flow of blood much longer. She had only to abandon him and her vengeance would be complete.
Strangely enough, the thought gave Irene little satisfaction. Some subtle change had come over her in those first moments of terror in the tunnel. She recalled suddenly the throb of joy that had pulsed through her when she felt the feeble stirring of life in Duret’s wrist when she had believed him dead.
Her mind reverted across the years to that night in the East End flat. For the first time she saw clearly the inevitability of the whole affair. Duret, her father, and her mother, all toys of the same malignant fate. Her father wrought up to insane resistance by the hysterical fears of her mother. Duret, entering the house to make a simple arrest, suddenly struck upon the head and seized in a death grip. With amazing clarity she saw the ruin the lust for vengeance had made of her own life. And now that it lay within the hollow of her hand, what an empty mockery that vengeance was.