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.
“Oh, shut up and let her tell her story,” Clark growled wearily.
“Anyway,” Billie Dean went on, “Clark had dropped a few hints about his mission in Panama, when we heard Tommy Glade was dead. Then he came right out and told me he was workin’ on a big smugglin’ plot and had all the evidence against Tommy, but hadn’t arrested him because he wanted to get others too. Clark felt sure, he said, that Tommy must have taken poison when he found the law closin’ in on him.”
“He took poison, all right,” Chuck Dean growled, “but he never knew it. Clark murdered that poor young fella.”
“I realized that later,” Billie replied. “But at the time — well, everything dovetailed and it seemed logical enough.”
“But even if it all did seem logical,” Chuck Dean said unhappily, “and even if you were convinced Clark was a Federal, why did you go out to the base and steal that bottle of perfume?”
“Because Clark convinced me that by getting the bottle of gems out of the way Tommy’s name might be kept clean. I know Tommy’s family, I know his two brothers in the service and” — she laughed humorlessly — “I’m a Southern girl.”
Bridges’ voice was no longer skeptical; it was merely tired as he said: “Southern chivalry can get a person into lots of trouble on occasion. Go on, Miss Dean.”
“Well, Clark told me the situation as we drove out to the base. He told me that he, naturally, couldn’t take those gems but he was willin’ to stretch a point and let me do it. The government had to recover the gems, of course, but it would serve no purpose to dirty Tommy’s name and disgrace his family now that he was dead.”
“But Billie!” Chuck exclaimed. “When Larry McMain walked in on you there in Tommy’s room, why didn’t you tell him the situation? Why did you lie and evade?”
She said quietly: “I’ll tell you, although a little later, when it was too late, I knew I’d made the mistake of my life. I know how much Larry thought of Tommy. He’d had him under his wing for six years. He was like a kid brother to him. He had a world of respect for him and high hopes for his career. And it was to spare Larry’s feelings that I wouldn’t tell him what I really thought then: that Tommy had been smugglin’ gems. I took the risk of queerin’ myself for life with him. Well, I took it. I was wrong, but—”
“Uh-huh,” Bridges put in. “And perhaps it was all for the best anyway. We might never have caught him if it hadn’t been for you, Miss Dean.”
After a few moments Billie said quietly: “I didn’t realize the true situation until Clark shot his chauffeur. Then it dawned on me like a flash just what I’d been doin’, just what it was all about.”
“And yet,” her brother said in a stricken voice, “you went on with Clark. You let him take you aboard his boat. You fled into the jungle with him.”
“Did you evah ride along with a gun proddin’ you in the ribs?” the girl flashed.
“God knows,” Clark said, still markedly cheerful, “I hated to drag her along at the point of a gun. But what could I do? I couldn’t turn her loose. Not until we crossed Darien and I was in a position to make a clean break. Then I planned to turn her over to some friendly natives who’d get her back to Panama.”
Chuck Dean growled something deep in his throat and jabbed his paddle viciously into the water. Billie patted his shoulder, turned and looked up at McMain.
“And now, darlin’, do you suppose you could smile at me?” she asked softly. “Because you’re goin’ to marry me, you know, and it would be simply awful to go through life with a husband who never smiled...You are goin’ to marry me, aren’t you? Because if—”
“Steady!” Bridges shouted. “There’s white water ahead.”
Benson Clark rose to his knees in the bow. “Look here, Bridges! I don’t like the idea of heading into that rapid with my hands cuffed. I’m a lousy swimmer and this dugout is overloaded. If it capsized I’d go to the bottom like a rock.”
“That’d be too damned bad,” Chuck Dean jeered. “I’d feel right sorry if you got drowned.”
Clark ignored the sally. “You men are all armed. I haven’t a weapon of any kind. You certainly can’t be afraid of me. If I’d wanted to fight, I’d have done it up the river. I gave in, without any resistance, because I figure I can beat this rap. For God’s sake, Bridges, take off these cuffs.”
A warning bell was ringing far in the back of McMain’s mind, but Billie Dean was leaning back against his knees and McMain’s heart was so full of happiness he barely heard it.
He did not protest when Bridges laid his paddle across the gunwale, took out a key and silently unlocked the handcuffs.
“Thanks,” Clark said. “You’re a right guy, Bridges, even if you are a dick.” He faced forward again.
They ran the short rapid without difficulty and came out near the right bank of the river, which was fully a hundred yards wide. Here the water ran deep and black and swift.
Benson Clark looked over his shoulder. Something in his eyes caught McMain’s attention, and the lieutenant’s heart started suddenly to pound. He dug his paddle in the water, shot the frail craft shoreward with all his strength.
Clark, leering at the men behind him, cried:
“I may be a sucker, but not so much of a sucker as you damned fools think!”
He caught the gunwales with both hands. He threw all the weight on his left arm and jerked upward with his right. The cayuco tilted and went over.
McMain heard Billie Dean screaming as the warm black water closed above her head. He knew Billie was a poor swimmer and he realized, as the swirling currents tugged at him, that only a good swimmer could get out of this mess without help.
Fighting to the surface, he shook the water out of his eyes and took in the situation.
Bridges had struck out for the near shore, swimming awkwardly but adequately. Chuck Dean had caught hold of the overturned dugout with one hand and was holding his sister with the other. And Benson Clark, swimming a neat crawl, was churning the water to foam as he headed straight across the river towards the left bank.
“Can you handle Billie?” McMain cried.
“We’re all right,” Chuck Dean puffed. “Boy, get goin’!”
McMain got going. Clark, by that time, had a lead of fifty feet. The navy man cut it to forty in the swift swim across the river. He saw Clark gain the bank, slip in the muddy slime and fall. The man was up in an instant. Catching hold of a trailing branch, he hauled himself up to firm ground.
Then McMain’s hands struck muddy bottom. He lurched erect in knee-deep water, steadied himself. Clark was leaping away into the jungle like a frightened deer.
It dawned upon McMain in a split second that Clark was escaping into the jungle on a trail he knew.
The man was thirty feet away, charging into the bush. McMain realized that in another second or two, he’d be out of sight. He clawed at his holster — and found it empty! His gun had slipped out when he was hurled into the river.
Splashing through the shallows, McMain caught a branch and swung himself up the slippery riverbank. He found the trail, a dark tunnel plunging straight into the thick forest.
McMain raced on, stumbling over protruding roots, catching his arms and head in trailing lianas, sinking at times almost knee-deep in mud. The sound of Clark’s steps and his flounderings among the vines drew no closer.
The lieutenant lowered his head. With his arms close to his sides, his fists in front of his face to protect his eyes from the brush, he shot forward.
He did not know how far he went, nor how long. But at last when his breath came in sobbing gasps and his heart was beating like a riveting machine, he hurtled out of the bush into the dull gray light of a small clearing.