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.
The lieutenant pursed his lips, nodded, and studied the neat piles of objects on the floor. He picked up the notebook, turned its pages carelessly, dropped it on the floor again.
“Make a list, Pete,” he said.
He started pacing around the room again, stopped at the table, picked up the key which lay there. He walked to the door with it, pushed it into the keyhole, turned it. The lock snapped back. With a pleased expression on his face, he tossed the key to the officer named Pete.
“Be sure to label this. No prints, of course.” More to himself than anyone in the room, he added: “They shouldn’t be allowed to put that fancy engraving on keys.” He looked at Henry suddenly. “Know anybody in Hot Springs?”
“No, sir.”
“Your wife got friends or relatives there?”
“Well, I don’t really know, sir. I don’t think so. She did mention it once, but only to say that it’d be a nice place to go to for a vacation someday.”
“Where was Carson from?”
“Some town in Wisconsin, I think.”
Apparently satisfied, the lieutenant turned away. “How’re you coming?” he asked. “Any prints?”
“Yeah, quite a few.” The officer with the short curly brown hair stood up and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “There’s a good set on the glass and the bottle.”
“Hey, what do you know!” another officer exclaimed suddenly. “Look at this!” He held up a lead slug. “It was in the flour, Lieutenant! Why, if it hadn’t been for that bag, it’d have killed him sure!”
Henry’s eyes widened. “Good Lord!” he gasped. “Why, he — almost—!” He quivered so realistically that his glasses came very near to sliding off his nose.
“Very nice,” the lieutenant commented. “In which arm were you carrying the bag?”
“My left. Like this.” Henry bent his arm so the lieutenant could see how he’d carried the heavy bag of groceries.
The lieutenant nodded, studied the pile of spilled cans and flour, then announced: “I’m going down to talk to the old lady. Wait here until I get back.” At the door, he added: “Give the bathroom and bedroom a going-over, too, boys.”
He was gone fifteen minutes, during which time an ambulance arrived, two men climbed the stairs with a wicker basket, and the body of Joe Carson was removed, leaving only a chalked outline to show where his corpse had lain.
Henry sat hunched in his chair through all this, his eyes following the careful, methodical work of the officers as they took measurements, labeled and packed items in boxes, and dusted powder over various surfaces. From time to time the faintest suggestion of a smile touched his lips fleetingly as he saw them checking the details which he had anticipated. He had nothing to worry about. He’d read and studied dozens of detective stories and he knew what they were looking for. But let them look. He had thought of everything.
When the lieutenant returned, he glanced around the room and gestured impatiently. “Hurry it up, boys. I’m taking Mr. Ebbett to the station. When you finish, seal the door and report to my office.”
Riding downtown in the squad car, the lieutenant explained: “It looks open-and-shut to me, Mr. Ebbett, but we have a certain routine we have to go through. I’m taking you to the station, where you’ll be formally booked on a charge of murder. There’ll be a coroner’s inquest tomorrow morning, and then, following that, a hearing in Felony Court. If your story checks, you’ll be released by the court. But first, of course, I have to get a detailed, signed statement from you.”
Henry hadn’t expected to be charged with murder. Somehow, he’d thought the police, knowing he was innocent, would simply take his statement and let him go.
But he didn’t protest. He nodded quietly and looked sad, like a man utterly crushed by the fact that his wife had deserted him and that his best friend had plotted his murder.
At police headquarters, he was most cooperative. He gave the lieutenant a detailed statement, signed it, and let them take his fingerprints.
The coroner’s inquest was called the following morning at nine o’clock, but, at Lieutenant Barr’s request, it was adjourned for two days to permit the police time to locate Bertha Ebbett.
In the meantime, a score of detectives attached to the homicide detail began checking Henry Ebbett’s statement. They found it to be surprisingly exact; in fact, in combing the city they learned details which Henry, though he had planned them, had not been able to mention.
They learned, for instance, that Joe Carson’s accounts at the Safeway Loan Company were short. A hasty audit, made overnight by a crew of accountants, established that, over a period of months, a sum exceeding $20,000 had been cleverly embezzled. Many of the records were in the neat handwriting of Henry Ebbett, but that was to be expected. Ebbett was only a bookkeeper. Joe Carson, on the other hand, had been a cashier and had had direct charge of the money.
What had happened to the money? The Safeway Loan Company, fortunately, was protected by insurance. Insurance investigators pored over the records and delved into Carson’s habits, hobbies, and bank account, but there was nothing to suggest that Carson had ever possessed more than $450 at one time.
One of the investigators, a radical, thought of Ebbett and made a thorough inquiry regarding him. But Ebbett, it developed, was even more spotless than Carson. Ebbett didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t gamble, and had never been known to pause to look at a well-turned ankle. His bank account was small, he possessed no jewelry, had indulged in no luxuries of any kind. Obviously, Carson had stolen the money as well as poor Mr. Henry Ebbett’s wife.
The investigators were helped to that conclusion by the discovery that a man resembling Carson had, a week earlier, purchased two tickets to Hot Springs, Arkansas. On learning this, Lieutenant Barr wired the Hot Springs, Arkansas, authorities to locate and hold Bertha Ebbett — age 26, height 5–8, weight 120, dark hair, brown eyes, regular features, probably registered at a local hotel.
That done, the lieutenant sighed, rubbed his brow, and sank back in his swivel chair. He raised his eyes wearily when the door of his office opened. “Well, Sergeant?”
“The ballistic reports are in, Lieutenant,” his aide reported. “They check with Ebbett’s statement. Carson’s prints — and only his — were on the glass and liquor bottle. He evidently opened the door with the key we found, threw his hat and coat on the couch, and made himself at home. Ebbett can thank his lucky stars that he was carrying that sack of flour. They found a second slug in it, which accounts for all the empty cartridges.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Well, Peterson checked those theatre ticket stubs we found in his pocket. They were to a neighborhood movie. The cashier recognized Carson’s photo. Said he came there often, sometimes with a woman who wore a cheap silver fox jacket. There was that sort of a jacket in Ebbett’s wife’s closet.”
“Uh-huh. Go on.”
“That’s about it. The revolver was Ebbett’s. Bought it several years ago. The automatic was Carson’s. His landlady saw it in his closet once when she was cleaning.”
“How is Ebbett doing?”
“About the same. He keeps asking how long he’s to be kept locked up.”
“Asked for a lawyer yet?”
“No.”
“Funny.” The lieutenant rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You’d think he’d be hollering habeas corpus, or something, at the top of his lungs.”