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.
“Charles!” he roared in a voice that shook the room and caused the hotel manager to cringe. “Did you forget to get that money from the bank and pay this little bill?”
Charlie Boston took up Quade’s cue.
“Gosh, I’m awful sorry. On my way to the bank yesterday afternoon I ran into our old friend John Belmont of New York and he dragged me into the Palmer House Bar for a cocktail. By the time I could tear myself away, the bank was closed.”
Quade raised his hands and let them fall hopelessly. “You see, Mr. Creighton, I just can’t trust him to do anything. Now I’ve got to go out into the cold this morning and get it myself.”
The hotel manager’s eyes glinted. “Listen, you’ve stalled—” he began, but Quade suddenly stabbed out a hand toward him. “That reminds me, Mr. Creighton, I’ve a couple of complaints to make. We’re not getting enough heat here and last night the damfool next door kept us awake half the night with his radio. I want you to see that he keeps quiet tonight. And do something about the heat. I can’t stand drafty, cold rooms.”
The manager let out a weary sigh. “All right, I’ll look after it. But about that rent—”
“Yes, of course,” cut in Quade, “and your maid left only two towels this morning. Please see that a couple more are sent up. Immediately!”
The manager closed the door behind him with a bang. Oliver Quade chuckled and lifted his newspaper again. But Charlie Boston wouldn’t let him read.
“You got away with it, Ollie,” he said, “but it’s the last time. I know it. I’ll bet we get locked out before tonight.” He shook his head sadly. “You, Oliver Quade, with the greatest brain in captivity, are you going to walk the streets tonight in ten below zero weather?”
“Of course not, Charles,” sighed Quade. “I was just about to tell you that we’re going out to make some money today. Look, it’s here in this paper. The Great Chicago Auditorium Poultry Show.”
Boston’s eyes lit up for a moment, but then dimmed again. “Can we raise three weeks’ rent at a poultry show?”
Quade slipped his feet into his socks and shoes. “That remains to be seen. This paper mentions twenty thousand paid admissions. Among that many people there ought to be a few who are interested in higher learning. Well, are you ready?”
Boston went to the clothes closet and brought out their overcoats and a heavy suitcase. Boston was of middle height and burly. He could bend iron bars with his muscular hands. Quade was taller and leaner. His face was hawk-like, his nose a little too pointed and lengthy, but few ever noticed that. They saw only his piercing, sparkling eyes and felt his dominant personality.
The auditorium was almost two miles from their hotel, but lacking carfare, Quade and Boston walked. When they reached their destination, Quade cautioned Boston:
“Be sharp now, Charlie. Act like we belonged.”
Quade opened the outer door and walked blithely past the ticket windows to the door leading into the auditorium proper. A uniformed man at the door held out his hand for the tickets.
“Hello,” Quade said, heartily. “How’re you today?”
“Uh, all right, I guess,” replied the ticket-taker. “You boys got passes?”
“Oh, sure. We’re just taking in some supplies for the breeders. Brr! It’s cold today. Well, be seeing you.” And with that he breezed past the ticket-taker.
“H’are ya, pal,” Boston said, treading on Quade’s heels.
The auditorium was a huge place but even so, it was almost completely filled with row upon row of wire exhibition coops, each coop containing a feathered fowl of some sort.
“What a lot of gumps!” Boston observed.
“Don’t use that word around here,” Quade cautioned. “These poultry folks take their chickens seriously. Refer to the chickens as ‘fine birds’ or ‘elegant fowls’ or something like that... Damn these publicity men!”
“Huh?”
Quade waved a hand about the auditorium. “The paper said twenty thousand paid admissions. How many people do you see in here?”
Boston craned his head around. “If there’s fifty I’m countin’ some of ’em twice. How the hell can they pay the nut with such a small attendance?”
“The entry fees. There must be around two thousand chickens in here and the entry fee for each chicken is at least a dollar and a half. The prize money doesn’t amount to much and I guess the paid admissions are velvet — if they get any, which I doubt.”
“Twenty thousand, bah!” snorted Boston. “Well, do we go back?”
“Where? Our only chance was to stay in our room. I’ll bet the manager changed the lock the minute we left it.”
“So what?”
“So I get to work. For the dear old Eagle Hotel.”
Quade ploughed through an aisle to the far end of the auditorium. Commercial exhibits were contained in booths all around the four sides of the huge room, but Quade found a small spot that had been overlooked and pushed a couple of chicken coops into the space.
Then he climbed up on the coops and began talking.
The Human Encyclopedia’s voice was an amazing one. People who heard it always marveled that such a tremendous voice could come from so lean a man. Speaking without noticeable effort, his voice rolled out across the chicken coops.
“I’m Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia,” he boomed. “I have the greatest brain in the entire country. I know the answers to all questions, what came first, the chicken or the egg, every historical date since the beginning of time, the population of every city in the country, how to eradicate mice in your poultry yards, how to mix feeds to make your chickens lay more eggs. Everything. Everything under the sun. On any subject: history, science, agriculture, and mathematics.”
The scattered persons in the auditorium began to converge upon Quade’s stand. Inside of two minutes three-fourths of the people in the building were gathered before Quade and the rest were on their way. He continued his preliminary build-up in his rich, powerful voice.
“Ask me a question, someone. Let me prove that I’m the Human Encyclopedia, the man who knows the answers to all questions. Try me out, someone, on any subject: history, science, mathematics, agriculture — anything at all!”
Quade stabbed out his lean forefinger at a middle-aged, sawed-off man wearing a tan smock. “You, sir, ask me a question?”
The man flushed at being singled out of the crowd. “Why, uh, I don’t know of any... Yes, I do. What’s the highest official egg record ever made by a hen?”
“That’s the stuff,” smiled Quade. He held out his hand dramatically. “That’s a good question, but an easy one to answer. The highest record ever made by a hen in an American official egg-laying contest is three hundred and forty-two eggs. It was made in 1930 at the Athens, Georgia, Egg-Laying Contest, by a Single-Comb White Leghorn. Am I right, mister?”
The sawed-off man nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, but I don’t see how you knew it. Most poultry folks don’t even remember it.”
“Oh, but you forget I told you I had the greatest brain in the country. I know the answer to all questions on any subject. Don’t bother to ask me simple poultry questions. Try me on something hard. You—” He picked out a lean, dour looking man. “Ask me something hard.”
The man bit his lip a moment, then said:
“All right, what state has the longest coastline?”
Quade grinned. “Ah, you’re trying the tricky stuff. But you can’t fool me. Most folks would say California or Florida. But the correct answer is Michigan. And to head off the rest of you on the trick geography questions let me say right away that Kentucky has the largest number of other states touching it and Minnesota has the farthest northern point of any state. Next question!”