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.
Receiver of their largess, the Hag of the Opera was betraying their secrets to the banditti! Long had it been her trade, with no suspicion directed at her. She had played into the hands of Mort Mitchell and to those who had gone before him in command of the same mob. Now, however, the Hag had extended the scope of her double-crossing. Her greed aroused by the calculating Blackie Rango, the Hag was getting the heist info for Blackie while purporting to be co-operating with Mort, and was acting as the go-between to arrange the frame-ups against Mort’s mob which Blackie engineered!
The Hag was watching closely the faces in the cars as they approached the entrance. She was looking for the flaming hair and the face of Vi Carroll, the bearer of instructions, and she wandered up and down the row of cars until she saw Vi’s signal. She hobbled to the side of the handsome limousine and approached the window through which Vivian’s brilliant opera cape showed.
“Alms, good folks,” the Hag cried, leaning close to the window, and Vi lowered it, compassionately, turning to her escort as she did so.
“Give me some money for this miserable creature,” Vivian said, and a man of the party thrust a bill in her hand. Vi’s daintily gloved hand stretched through the auto’s window as the Hag whined her thanks. Her mumbled words, however, merely were a cover for the whispered words which Vi directed to her.
“The Horton Place on the Sound, Monday night!” Vi said, and the Hag winked acknowledgment of the words.
The shiny limousine moved forward toward the opera house entrance with Vi Carroll chatting laughingly with her companions as the Hag moved away. The first step in the trap set for Mort Mitchell and his mob had been taken. Within a half-hour the deceiving message would be on its way to pave the road for destruction. The Hag would relay the false information to Carlotta Wynn, emissary of the Mitchell mob!
The Hag moved down the line of carriages, ready to relay the frame-up message. She now was looking for Carlotta, the moll from Mitchell’s mob. She did not know that Carlotta, hidden in the milling throng on the sidewalk, had been almost at her elbow when Vi Carroll whispered her message — and further than that, the keen-eyed Carlotta, seeing through a changed appearance in the beautiful Vivian, had recognized the society-minded moll as the enemy she was stalking so desperately!
Carlotta Wynn, her teeth clenched and her hands doubled into small fists, gloried in the triumph she foresaw over the woman who had sent her into the underworld on her adventure into vengeance. That smiling beauty with the flaming hair now, apparently, a society favorite, only two years before had done the irreparable wrong to the black-eyed girl who stood in the opera crowd and planned her revenge!
The moll forgot the presence of the “music-loving kid” who always accompanied her to the opera performances. He was a harmless sort; he did not know that he was a pawn in the machinations of a mob. He went to the opera with the pretty girl who seemed pleased to enjoy the music with him.
Everything except revenge was forgotten by the black-haired moll. She moved forward as Vi’s auto moved toward the entrance.
“I could kill her now—!” she spoke aloud and the music-loving kid startled.
“Who could you kill, Carlotta?” he asked in astonishment. The girl recovered her poise.
“No one, Robbie,” she replied, “I was just joking.” She saw the Hag approaching and she knew the crone sought her, to relay the deathtrap message to Mort Mitchell.
“There’s the Hag,” Carlotta said, pushing toward her. “I always give her a little change. Isn’t she horrible looking? I feel as though I had to help her.”
She drew a few coins from her small purse and stepped to the side of the Hag, dropping the coins into the outstretched tin cup. The Hag leaned close to her, the repulsive, hairy mole almost touching the girl’s face.
“The Horton Place, on the Sound — on Monday night, girlie,” the Hag whispered. “Tell Mort it’s a pipe — and not to forget me.”
She turned from the girl, whining her plea for alms to others as Carlotta and her escort walked to the entrance.
Blackie Rango’s message to trap Mort Mitchell and his mob to death was delivered — but it was delivered through a moll who knew that the Hag had turned on her former benefactors and was plotting with their enemies for their deaths!
The beautiful strains of “Lucia” meant nothing to Carlotta that night. She sat through the performance with the lad because she did not know where to reach Mort until late in the night. And before her eyes, instead of the singers and the brilliant audience, was the picture of Vi Carroll, the woman the moll was determined should feel the weight of her vengeance.
The moll dismissed her escort quickly as the throng poured from the house of music. She raced to a taxicab and hurried to Dapper Dan’s, where she felt sure she would find Mort at midnight. She entered the speakie through the garage and the rear door, and waited for Mort in the secret chamber.
The moll was on her feet, pacing the room, when Mort entered.
“I’ve got the works, Mort,” she cried. “It’s a cold frame, set up by Blackie Rango. Here’s the message from the Hag: ‘The Horton Place, on the Sound — Monday night!’ It’s phony! It’s—”
“How do you know it’s phony?” demanded Mort.
“Because I overheard the message slipped to her, Mort, I heard it slipped to her by the very woman I’ve been hunting, the jane I’ve sworn to find and to repay a certain debt.”
“And who,” asked Mort, eagerly, “was Rango’s messenger? Did you spot her?”
“Yes, I spotted her!” responded the moll, and her eyes were blazing. “And maybe you’ll be interested to know just who she is! You’ve been playing around with your society friends — with a red-headed woman who’s got you dizzy, haven’t you?”
“Never mind that. It’s my business where I go and—”
The moll blazed at him angrily:
“Well, maybe this is your business, too. The red-headed moll who gave the Hag the tip that’s set to put you under the grass went to the opera with the Elberts, your society friends, and is the crookedest snake that ever wore woman’s clothes!”
Mort Mitchell’s amazement held him speechless.
“Not Vi, not Vi Carroll!” he ejaculated. “It can’t be—”
“Fall for the tip, then, sap,” retorted the moll, “but I won’t. If you go near the Horton Place Monday night, Mort, you’ll die from hot lead poisoning. I know!”
Mort grabbed the moll by the wrist and swung her around until she was looking up right into his eyes. His voice was low, but it was full of menace.
“Damn you,” he snarled, “are you on the level, or are you framing Vi Carroll, just to—”
The moll twisted away from him furiously.
“Take it or leave it, you sap,” she snapped, “but I’m going to get HER! And I’ll make you believe it. Listen, Mort, will you believe your red-headed vamp is crossing you before it’s too late? Will you believe me if I prove it to you?”
“Yes,” he answered sullenly, “if you prove it. But, how are you going to do it?”
An inspiration came to the moll.
“I’ve got it, Mort,” she cried excitedly. “You’d kidnap the Hag of the Opera, wouldn’t you — to save yourself?”
“No, but why?”
“Because,” replied Carlotta, “I want her out of my way on the next opera night — because that night I’LL BE THE HAG OF THE OPERA!”