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.
The man with the wart got out into the aisle again. He raised his arms and shook his fists. He cried:
“That man’s got my diamonds! That man! Stop the plane! That thief has my diamonds. He’s going to land any minute! Stop the—”
And suddenly the man with the wart ceased yelling and crowded to a window and fixed his eyes avidly on the figure slowly drifting down, drifting now very close to earth, near the wide spread of a red factory’s roofs!
The plane tilted, began to point its nose toward the earth. The man with the wart lost his balance on the slippery seat upon which he had been kneeling. He slid, he clawed at the seat, he banged his head against the back of the seat in front, and he fell.
The stewardess ran to him and said, “The plane’s stopping very soon now, anyway, sir — the regular stop. And you must have seen where that thief landed with your diamonds—”
Sarah Watson settled in her seat and folded her hands complacently. She turned her head and Ben Todd leaned toward her.
“Bennie,” she said, close to Ben Todd’s ear, “Bennie, I’ve always said that all men were alike, but the one that just landed under that parachute is different, Bennie, because I made him myself. I had a hell of a time finding enough scrap iron about that airport to weigh him down, and a hell of a time stealing a parachute there, too, and, of course, there’s a good suit of yours gone to pot to clothe him, but we can charge the suit to Mr. Hecker.”
A hand touched Sarah on the shoulder. She turned, looked up through her veil at the face of the gentleman with the wart.
“Madam,” said the gentleman, “I wish to apologize for accusing you of stealing my diamonds. I was wrong!”
“That,” said Sarah, “is perfectly all right, perfectly all right.”
The man with the wart leaned closer. He stared down into the face behind the polka dots of Sarah’s veil. He said: “Madam, I—” and suddenly wrenched the veil away, brushing aside the clutch of Ben Todd’s fingers.
The man with the wart stared down into the eyes under Sarah Watson’s bristling brows. He said, very slowly, and lingeringly:
“Ah!”
Sarah said nothing. The thin lips under her incipient mustache curved slightly.
The gentleman with the wart began to talk with a rush of words. He said:
“I see! I remember you! I know you now! You took them and you passed them over to him back here and he jumped with them. What a dummy I’ve been! — A dummy! I see it all now! A dummy! Not a man, but a—”
The plane bumped. Dust fanned past its windows from the whirring propeller. There was another bump.
The man with the wart took one more moment to glare balefully into Sarah’s eyes. He said: “You think you’re damn smart, yes, but I’ll outsmart you yet, you old harridan.”
And then he rushed to the door at the rear of the plane, wrenched it open, and leaped while the plane was still gliding down the runway. In the silence which followed the cessation of movement and sound, Sarah Watson’s voice said hoarsely: “The gent who lost his diamonds seems to be in a hurry to get some place.”
The car carrying Sarah Watson and Ben Todd away from the airport sped along the wide, white boulevard. Ahead of it, another car sped — far ahead.
Ben Todd took his clenched hands off his knees for a moment and turned to Sarah. He said:
“He may make it yet. If he’s as smart as I am, he knows just about where that dummy landed.”
Sarah Watson unfolded her hands, opened her capacious handbag, stared at herself in the bag’s mirror. She said: “Becoming hat, this. It’s my Sunday hat.”
“Sarah, for the love of — listen, that guy with the wart is gaining. He’s going to get there long before we do. He’s going to get there and he’s going to find that dummy, and he’s going to get that necklace. Sarah, you’ve got to think of something!”
“I am thinking of something,” said Sarah, snapping her bag shut. “I’m thinking we’d better tell the driver to slow up a bit.”
“Listen, you! You gone batty? Can’t you see that guy is eating up the road?”
“Bennie,” said Sarah calmly, “some day you’re going to have a nervous breakdown. Now listen. You may think you know just where that dummy landed and probably the gent with the wart thinks he knows, too, but things look different from the air, Bennie, and I’m betting the gent with the wart is going to spend a long time searching for that necklace...” Sarah broke off and leaned forward to the driver.
“Driver,” she said. “Take the next turning, please. And don’t go so fast. My partner’s a bit nervous.”
“Who wouldn’t be nervous!” yelled Ben Todd, “with an idiot woman like you! Slow up and let me out of here, driver. I’m going to get another car and go after that guy...”
“You’re going to stay right in this car,” said Sarah firmly. “Take the next crossing, driver — the one that leads to the police station.”
IV
Sarah Watson strode into police headquarters, her fingers on Ben Todd’s arm. Ben Todd’s pallor was excessive and his forehead was dewed with sweat.
“Captain,” said Sarah to the man behind the desk, “I’m Sarah Watson. Here’s my card. This is my assistant. We’re here to put you on the trail of the murderer of Dolores Flores.”
“Already?” said the man behind the desk. “We just got it over the wire that they’d found that dame dead on the train to Chi.”
“Let me talk, Captain. I’m in a hurry. I was on that train. I had the berth opposite the murderer’s. I meant to keep my eyes on him all night because I knew who he was. I’d seen his photo in the police files at home. Wait, let me talk, Captain.
“I meant to watch him, but my eyes got stuck together for a few minutes and when I opened them, I saw the murderer sneaking back into his berth from somewhere. He was in his shirt sleeves. He had something red on his cuff, his right cuff. It’ll be there yet, when you get him.”
“Blood, eh? Where is this guy?”
“Not blood, captain. There was no blood. The girl was strangled to death. When I found her, dead, in her berth, her handbag was lying open beside her. There was a lipstick in it, blood red, and uncapped. The metal case of the lipstick had printing on it that said the lipstick was made special for Dolores Flores. Your chemists will be able to match that lipstick up with the red smudge on the murderer’s cuff, Captain, when you get him.”
“Say listen, where is this guy? Where do we get him?”
“Let me talk, Captain. The murderer got that smudge on his cuff, of course, when he put his thieving hand in the girl’s purse to steal her valuables. I would have got the same smudge on my own... er... hand, if I had put it in. But of course, I didn’t. Fingerprints, you know, Captain. Now, Captain, if you’ll just send a squad car out with a half dozen men with guns. There’s a big red brick factory about ten miles southwest of the airport here.”
“The Furness factory,” said the Captain.
“The name don’t matter,” said Sarah. “The point is, you’ll probably have to beat the woods that lie south of the factory. The murderer will be in those woods, doing some beating himself, for something he lost. You’ll catch him easy, Captain. Those woods are big and they’re thick, and the murderer don’t know just where to look. He’s a dark man, the murderer, with black eyes, and a wart on his chin with two hairs sprouting out of it and—”