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.
She could feel the quiver of the man’s back under the nose of the gun.
“You will die for this!” the Wolf vowed.
The Countess found the smooth, lustrous coil of Madame de Valois’s necklace in his side pocket and stuffed it hastily into her bodice.
“Possibly,” she agreed amiably. “But this is no time to discuss the question. Pay attention to what I say. If you move before two minutes elapse I will shoot you down in your tracks! Continue to keep your face glued to the — gates — and—”
Dropping her weaponed hand, the Countess surged around the turn of the wall where the avenue joined the side street and raced across the petrol-polished asphalt toward Francois and the waiting limousine. Hazily aware of the growing tumult in the house itself, the Countess was stunned by the sudden crack of a revolver, the whistle of a bullet flying past her, the hoarse bellow of the Wolf’s voice:
“Police!... Police!... Thieves! There she goes!... In that car...”
Pausing only to fire twice at the howling Apache, the Countess, sensitive to the fact that a machine was rolling down the street toward her, climbed into the limousine.
“Quick!” she cried breathlessly. “Off with you, Francois!”
Like a nervous thoroughbred, the car sprang toward the junction of the avenue beyond. The Countess pressed her face to the rear window. The other motor was a thousand rods behind, a car with pale, yellow lamps — a police car — one of the machines of the Sûreté.
“Across the river!” the Countess directed through the open front glass of the limousine. “We will shake them off on the other side of the Seine!”
Across a bridge — over the night-painted river — past cafés and then into a district of gaunt, silent warehouses, the limousine panted. Twice more the Countess looked back. The pale, yellow lamps behind followed like an avenging nemesis.
“Round the next corner and slow down,” the Countess commanded crisply. “The minute I swing off, speed up and head for the open country—”
On two wheels the limousine shot around into the black gully of a narrow, cobble-paved side street. Its brakes screamed as it slowed for a minute before lunging forward again. Shrinking back behind a pile of casks that fronted one of the warehouses, the Countess laughed as the second car whirled past.
“The long arm of Murgier!” she sneered. “What rubbish!”
Still laughing a little, she moved out from behind the casks — to stiffen suddenly and dart back behind them again. A motorcycle had wheeled into the silent street and a man was jumping off it.
The Countess, frantic fingers clutching the pearls of Madame de Valois, knew it was the Wolf even before his level tones came to her.
“Mademoiselle,” the Apache said. “I know you are there. I saw the shimmer of your gown before you stepped back behind those casks. You cannot escape me. Hand the necklace over!”
“The theft of the de Valois pearls?” the Countess d’Yls cried softly. “Monsieur is joking!”
Murgier, on the shaded promenade of the Chateau, touched the tips of his disconsolate mustache.
“There is really,” he said almost wearily, “no use in pretending surprise or indignation. Four days ago we bagged the Wolf — he made a full and complete confession...”
The sunlit quiet of the promenade was broken by the throaty cry of the Countess d’Yls. She jumped up, her blue eyes cold, blazing stars.
“Yes, you devil!” she said unsteadily. “Yes, Monsieur Ferret, we took the pearls — I took the pearls! The Wolf did not get them! No one else shall! I have hidden them well! Take me, take us both — jail us — you will never find the necklace — no one ever will!”
Murgier snapped his fingers twice. The men who had come up the dusty road in the travel-stained motor rounded the corner of the walk. The Countess laughed insolently at the man who faced her.
“In a measure,” Murgier said quietly, “your statement is true. No one will ever reclaim the de Valois pearls. Let me tell you something. When the Wolf made his appearance that night at the warehouse, you saved the necklace from him by dropping it into the mouth of an open cask. Is that not correct? You marked this cask so you might distinguish it again. When you foiled the Wolf your agent began a search for the cask. It had been stored away in the warehouse — there were difficulties — so far your aid has not been able to locate it — but you have hopes. Madame Countess, it is my duty to disillusion both you and—” he nodded toward de Remec “—your husband. There was one thing you over-looked — the contents of the cask in question—”
The Countess drew a quick breath, leaning forward as if to read the meaning of the other’s words.
“The contents?”
Murgier smiled.
“The cask,” he explained, “we found to be half full of vinegar. The pearls are no more — eaten up like that! Pouf! Let us be going.”
Snowbound
C. B. Yorke
Harold B. Hersey, the publisher who created Gangster Magazine, wrote in his memoir, Pulp Editor (1937), that this was the magazine “that enabled me to lose money in that enterprise until the depression wiped out the business.” He had also created Racketeer Stories, Mobs, Gun Molls, and Gangland Stories. The American public had become enthralled with gangsters and their luxurious lifestyle, so vividly reported in the nation’s newspapers. While ordinary people suffered privation as the country plunged into what is now referred to as the Great Depression, they took solace and guilty pleasure from reading about the fun gangsters enjoyed as they partook of music, wine, beautiful women, fast cars, and so on. Little of it was true, but it made for good reading. Tastes change, and soon it was the FBI and the G-Men, those who captured or killed the criminals, who suddenly became the heroes, killing off the gangster publications.
Many of these pulps came to an abrupt end as the Roaring Twenties drew to a close. During their brief lives, they had failed to seduce the top writers into working for them, and most of the bylines appearing in their pages are unknown today. It is entirely possible that many of the stories were produced by popular writers using pseudonyms on their lesser work that appeared in less prestigious publications. Nothing could be discovered about C. B. Yorke.
“Snowbound” was first published in the October 1931 issue of Gangster Stories.
Queen Sue was the toughest moll that ever pulled a gat this side of Hades — she was in the rackets for what she could get out of ’em— But peddlin’ snow was entirely out of her line, and not even Garland’s “persuasive” methods could make this baby change her mind!!
Chapter I
Over Her Head
She was nervous from the moment she entered my apartment. I didn’t blame her much. Suds Garland had given her a tough job.
“Here’s the money,” she said, fumbling in her purse with trembling hands. “Five grand, cash.”
I laughed softly. The girl looked up at me with wide eyes. Something in her gaze told me she feared more than what I might do to her.
“Chicken feed,” I said, still smiling.
“Seven thousand?” she countered.
“That’s funny!”
“Ten grand? That’s a lot of money.”
Perhaps ten thousand was a lot to her. She looked like a kid who wasn’t accustomed to dealing in big figures when it came to cold cash. But as for me, ten thousand dollars didn’t even get me interested in her proposition, and I told her so.