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 effect was weird as the disk revolved and the tom-tom beat. The record was played slowly and the reefers themselves tended to slow and dull everything — thereby providing for a full appreciation of the music. And every so often a musician grunted or delivered an “Oh” or an “Ah” as he caught some new nuance in the music that he’d never before heard.
The air was heavy with those pungent, cloying fumes and Firpo Cole began to cough. He didn’t have to look at his handkerchief to know it was becoming smeared with red. But he didn’t care. At last he knew what was what. That small item of information from Rocco Pace had done the trick. The coughing became worse and he walked into the kitchen.
Evelyn Dorn was wolfing minced ham sandwiches. “I’d rather eat here than get sick in there,” she explained.
Firpo Cole said: “Inside you were raving about star sapphires. Did you ever ask Tuttle to give you one?”
“Sure. It don’t harm to ask — but I never got it.”
“That’s what I thought. Tuttle did buy it for you, Evelyn, only he forgot it at the old place when it burned down.”
“No kiddin’?”
“He’s bought you a lot of stuff, hasn’t he?”
“Some,” she said coyly. “Ephraim ain’t a tightwad.”
“That’s what I figured — and on top of that he’s been playing the horses. That’s why he set that fire and later killed Ruth.”
Evelyn Dorn stopped eating for a moment. “You mean it?”
Firpo nodded. “He stole twelve hundred bucks in receipts from Jugger and then burned the joint down. He figured rightly that Jugger would think the money burned with the building and that he was making enough profit on insurance not to investigate too much.”
“Well, what do you know?” marveled Evelyn.
Firpo’s voice became bitter. “When Tuttle stole that dough from Jugger’s office he accidently left that brooch which he bought for you on Jugger’s desk — and that’s where Ruth found it. He made a too-big stink about losing his letter opener and then killed Ruth with it. He thought she was blackmailing him about the fire and wasn’t satisfied with a five-hundred-buck payoff.”
“You can never tell about someone,” she commented. “Can you?”
The double-hinge door swung open and Simms, the police detective, Max and Ephraim Tuttle came in.
“All right, Firpo,” said Simms. “I know you got that jewelry you stole from Bailey’s body. Let’s have it.”
The automatic appeared in Firpo’s hand. The safety catch was still off — the way he wanted it. “Stick your mitts up and line against the wall.”
The three men did as they were bid. Evelyn Dorn gave a squeal and fled. They could hear the apartment door slam shut.
“Now look here, Firpo,” Simms’ voice was hoarse. “This ain’t gonna help. If you just take it easy—”
“Can it,” interrupted Firpo. “I suppose Tuttle told you I had the brooch.”
Simms nodded.
Tuttle said quickly: “I didn’t mean anything, Firpo. I just heard it was stolen and then when Jugger said you was talking about it I thought I better call the cops.”
Firpo’s voice was as calm and as steady as the hand that held the gun. “Tuttle, all you figured was that you’d pin the killing on me and get out of it yourself. But there’s no chance of that because you’re paying for it now.” He took a bead on the pit of Ephraim Tuttle’s stomach.
“Now watch it,” said Simms rapidly. “Let us take care of it, Firpo. If he did the killing he’s entitled to a trial but sure as hell you’ll swing if you try it yourself.”
“I know I will,” said Firpo Cole, “and this’ll be one condemned man that’ll really eat a damned hearty breakfast.”
Then he sighted carefully and pulled the trigger six times.
The Girl with the Silver Eyes
Dashiell Hammett
“The Girl with the Silver Eyes” seems to be a story about the Continental Op, the unnamed private eye who stars in most of Hammett’s best short fiction as well as in his first two novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. It is actually the story of the very beautiful young woman with long, lush brown hair who calls herself Jeanne Delano; in a previous adventure, “The House in Turk Street,” she was Elvira, with bobbed red hair. A lot of people died in the first story, and more deaths followed in the second. It is Jeanne and her scheme that sets into motion the events that bring about the involvement of the Continental Detective Agency and its fat but very tough operative. Like many of the women in the stories by Hammett (1894–1961), she is young, very pretty, feminine, an inveterate liar, and utterly without conscience. She is a chameleon, changing from a desirable kitten to someone so cold-blooded that she will allow, even encourage, the slaughter of innocent people for her own selfish and greedy ends. Think of Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon and you know all you need to know about Hammett’s femmes fatales and, in fact, just about every sexy girl in every noir book and motion picture.
“The Girl with the Silver Eyes” is connected to “The House in Turk Street” in that it features Jeanne/Elvira as the catalyst for the ensuing action. It was originally published in the June 1924 issue of Black Mask. “The House in Turk Street” had been in the April 1924 issue.
A bell jangled me into wakefulness. I rolled to the edge of my bed and reached for the telephone. The neat voice of the Old Man — the Continental Detective Agency’s San Francisco manager — came to my ears:
“Sorry to disturb you, but you’ll have to go up to the Glenton Apartments on Leavenworth Street. A man named Burke Pangburn, who lives there, phoned me a few minutes ago asking to have someone sent up to see him at once. He seemed rather excited. Will you take care of it? See what he wants.” I said I would and, yawning, stretching and cursing Pangburn — whoever he was — got my fat body out of pajamas into street clothes.
The man who had disturbed my Sunday morning sleep — I found when I reached the Glenton — was a slim, white-faced person of about twenty-five, with big brown eyes that were red-rimmed just now from either sleeplessness or crying, or both. His long brown hair was rumpled when he opened the door to admit me; and he wore a mauve dressing-robe spotted with big jade parrots over wine-colored silk pajamas.
The room into which he led me resembled an auctioneer’s establishment just before the sale — or maybe one of these alley tea rooms. Fat blue vases, crooked red vases, vases of various shapes and colors; marble statuettes, ebony statuettes, statuettes of any material; lanterns, lamps and candlesticks; draperies, hangings and rugs of all sorts; odds and ends of furniture that were all somehow queerly designed; peculiar pictures hung here and there in unexpected places. A hard room to feel comfortable in.
“My fiancée,” he began immediately in a high-pitched voice that was within a notch of hysteria, “has disappeared! Something has happened to her! Foul play of some horrible sort! I want you to find her — to save her from this terrible thing that...”
I followed him this far and then gave it up. A jumble of words came out of his mouth — “spirited away... mysterious something... lured into a trap” — but they were too disconnected for me to make anything out of them. So I stopped trying to understand him, and waited for him to babble himself empty of words.