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.
Five minutes later, Miss Flores was back in her seat and Sarah was back in hers.
“Ben,” whispered Sarah, “when that girl bleached her hair, she bleached out all her brains. She’s got that necklace in her handbag, crammed in with all the face paint and lip paint and the cigarettes and the rest of it. I saw it — the Gautier necklace!”
“The imitation of the Gautier necklace.”
“I was forgetting,” said Sarah. “Well, the imitation’s worth two thousand, ain’t it? The girl’s an imbecile. Go on up, now, Bennie, and sparkle for her. Keep your eye on her purse but don’t put your hand in it. When the time comes for snitching, I’ll snitch.”
“Well, when is the time coming for snitching? That’s a little detail we ain’t worked out, yet, old girl.”
“We ain’t but I have. It won’t be until after dinner anyway, Bennie. I never steal except on a full stomach.”
The train sped on. Sarah sat with her head back against the green plush, her hands folded over her prominent abdomen. Two hours passed. A black man with a white smile and a white coat came down the aisle, beating a musical gong. Sarah stirred. Ben Todd came down the aisle, behind him, Miss Dolores Flores. They stopped at Sarah’s seat.
“If you don’t object, Auntie,” said Ben Todd, “Miss Flores and I are going to dine togeth—”
“Delighted,” said Sarah, rising. “Love to eat on trains. Lead the way, nephew.”
After dinner was over, Ben Todd squired Dolores into the club car at the end of the train for a cigarette. Sarah returned to car 654, and was occupying the seat opposite her own, while the porter made up her lower and the upper above it — reserved for Ben Todd. Sarah wore the complacent and reminiscent look of one who has relished good food.
A long-legged young man charged suddenly into the almost empty car and gripped Sarah by the shoulder. He said: “Listen. There’s a stop in five minutes. I saw you fingering the girl’s purse. If you’ve got the goods, let’s hop off and...”
Sarah shook his fingers off. She half rose from the seat and pushed her face close to his. She said: “You go back and stick with the fool girl, Ben Todd. She’s in danger as long as she’s got that thing in her bag. I’ve just remembered where I saw the gent with the wart last — Go!”
Ben Todd waited a moment, staring. Then he wheeled and charged back down the aisle. In the doorway he collided with a gentleman who also seemed in haste. The gentleman had a wart on his chin.
Sarah settled back in her seat and closed her eyes. A few moments passed. Someone again laid a hand on her shoulder. She started, looked up into a pair of slimey, dark eyes. She said: “Mercy! I’m afraid I’m sitting in your place, mister. The porter’s making up my bed. If you don’t mind, I’ll just—” She slid over to make room for the owner of the seat.
The gentleman with the wart sat down.
Sarah said: “You know, I’ve seen you some place before, mister.”
The gentleman with the wart looked her over. He said:
“Old stuff! You ain’t.”
“Maybe it was a picture of you I saw,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “I see a lot of pictures of people—”
The porter said: “All ready, Madam.”
Sarah rose. She glanced down at the face with the wart. She crossed the aisle and disappeared between the green curtains of her berth.
For five minutes thereafter, Sarah’s hoarse voice grunted and groaned behind her curtains. Then, she emerged, swathed in a purple crepe robe, and lurched up the aisle toward the Ladies’ Room. When she returned, the gentleman with the wart had vanished. There was no one in the car to notice that Sarah was still thoroughly corseted and shod under her kimono.
An hour passed — two hours — three hours. The berths were all made up and the car dark, except for the dim lights at either end. Someone fell against the curtains of Sarah’s berth. She opened them with a gun in her hand. She saw a ladder and a pair of long legs ascending the ladder, and she lay back. She kept the curtains slightly parted with one hand, and her eye fixed to the opening.
More hours passed, hours filled with the hooting of the train’s whistle and the rattling of the train’s wheels. Sarah opened her curtains wide and surveyed the empty aisle. She drew back into her cubicle and tapped smartly on the ceiling above her.
“Huh?” said a sleepy voice. Sarah tapped again. She put her feet into the aisle and stood up. She was still wrapped in her purple kimono.
The curtains of the upper berth parted. A rumpled red-head appeared in the opening. Sarah said, very softly:
“Time! Ring for the porter. Keep him busy this end.”
The red-head nodded. Its eyes blinked. Sarah strode up the aisle. At the other end of the car, the porter’s bell began to ring, insistently. It was then three a.m.
Two minutes later, Sarah thrust her head out of the Ladies’ Room door and peered down the car. Deserted. Not a sound but the faint wailing of the train.
Sarah began to walk down the aisle toward her own section. She paused before she got there, her hand gripping the curtains of the lower occupied by Miss Dolores Flores.
III
In the men’s washroom, Ben Todd took his head out of his hands and looked up into the anxious face of the porter. Ben Todd said:
“I feel better now, George. What time is it?”
“Three fifteen, suh.”
“Um. So we been in here ten minutes, huh? Well, George, that was sure nifty liquor you gave me. It did the trick. Here!”
Ben Todd thrust a bill into the porter’s ready fingers and stood up.
He said: “Don’t bother any more about me, now, George. Just stay and finish up that bottle.”
Ben Todd swayed down the aisle toward section 4. The car was dark, silent. The ladder was still in place in front of his berth.
Ben Todd climbed up. Someone had switched the light on over his bed. Someone had left a slip of paper stuck into his pillow with a large safety pin. The determined script on the paper was Sarah Watson’s. It said: “Next stop 3:25. Get ready. The girl is dead.”
There was no signature. There was a smudge of red near the ragged lower edge of the note.
Ben Todd sat hunched up, staring. His freckles began to take on a darker hue against the whitening of his face. Presently, the paper began to shake a little in his hand.
It was sixty seconds before he began frenziedly adjusting the few garments he had removed that night. He was badly handicapped by the jerkiness of his breathing and the fumbling of his fingers.
At 3:24, he was sitting cross legged on his berth, gripping his valise. There was no sound from the berth beneath him.
At 3:25, the train stopped. Still no sound from below.
At 3:25 %, there was a stir in the aisle. Ben Todd peered down, saw a man dashing into the vestibule of the car.
At 3:26, the conductor’s whistle blew from the platform outside the train, and the train gave a preliminary lurch.
Sarah Watson erupted from her berth, charged down the aisle. Ben Todd swung his long legs over at the same instant, ignored the ladder, leaped, followed her, caught up with her in the vestibule. The conductor was just mounting the steps. Sarah put a hand on his chest and shoved. She went by him like a blast.
The conductor leaped back on the moving train, cursing. Ben Todd slid into the next vestibule and jumped. He landed sitting down on the dark platform, the few scattered lights of the town beyond the station pinwheeling in his head.