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.
Doris Logan had smiled. “Possibly we are talking about two different people.”
“How about the person who swears they saw the young man getting into your car, Miss Logan?”
“I can’t explain that. But the gas station man told you that when I passed his station I was alone in the car. The young man tried to follow me in the darkness when I went back to get into my car. And then he disappeared. I don’t know where he went.”
“How about those purchases you made?”
“I wanted to treat my own infected arm, Lieutenant. Is there a law against that? After all, Lieutenant! You people searched my camp and found no trace of any man being there. This whole inquisition is getting a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? The murder was committed the day before yesterday. The murderer must be a thousand miles away by now. And you waste good police time asking me silly questions. I’ve told you all I know.”
De Wolfe scowled as he thought of how Krobey had reacted. The stupid man should have at least apologized. Instead he had smiled placidly at Miss Logan and had said, “We’ll be talking some more. If we want you, we’ll send a sedan up to the camp and bring you back.”
“I may stay in town for a few days. You have my apartment address.”
De Wolfe Haggard picked up a fresh yellow pencil, tested the needle point with a pink thumb. He sat at his desk in the outer office and stared at the blank sheet of white paper in front of him. The blank sheet became a movie screen. A drama was being enacted.
De Wolfe Haggard, district attorney, stood in the crowded courtroom and pointed to the defendant who had taken the stand. The defendant was Doris Logan. De Wolfe Haggard, with voice of booming bronze, pointed a dramatic finger at the defendant and said, “Would you believe this fair and innocent creature to be capable of the foulness imputed to her by my learned...”
No, that wasn’t right. He would have to be the prosecutor...
He glanced toward the doorway. He shook his head to remove the mirage standing in the doorway in a green dress. The mirage stayed, came walking toward him.
He got up so eagerly that he tipped his chair over. He picked it up, moved another chair eagerly into position and said, “Do sit down, Miss Logan. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the... indignity of the questions you were asked.”
Doris Logan sat and gave him a warm smile. “I knew you felt that way, Mr. Haggard. It’s so nice to feel that someone is on your side. That — that horrible attitude of suspicion.”
“I know. I know,” he said soothingly. “How can I help you?”
“I may seem to you, Mr. Haggard, like a very foolish girl. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been mixed up in this sort of thing. I don’t believe I’ve ever had my picture in the papers before. As a nurse, the notoriety isn’t good for me. Surely you realize that.”
De Wolfe nodded sagely.
“I wondered if there is any way I could help the authorities. If I could take an active interest, then possibly that horrid Lieutenant Krobey wouldn’t...”
Her voice trailed off. De Wolfe stared at the yellow pencil. He felt very alive and very reckless. He lowered his voice. “Actually, Miss Logan, I should discourage you. But you seem to be a person of high intelligence. Suppose you assist me in this case.”
“How exciting!” Doris said.
“If we could meet outside the office we can go over my case notes on this whole affair. Say about four? The cocktail lounge at the Hotel Rogers?”
She stood up, held out a cool hand. “Thank you so much, Mr. Haggard. I’ll be there.”
“Could you call me De Wolfe?”
“And you must call me Doris.” She held his hand tightly. “After all, we are working together, aren’t we?”
As soon as the outer door had closed behind her, De Wolfe Haggard walked twice around his desk, smacking his fist into his palm and saying jubilantly, “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy...”
He felt the sere and aged eye of the chief female clerk upon him. He gave her a frosty and metallic look and sat down. He stared at the sheet of white paper and slowly another courtroom scene began to materialize. Krobey was the accused. Doris Logan was a juror. He leaned over the jurybox railing and talked directly to her. Her lips were parted and her warm admiring eyes were on him...
She sat at his side, so close to him that, if he moved another inch, their shoulders would touch. He moved a half inch. When the drinks were before them, he took out his notebook and placed it on the table. Together they leaned over it.
“You see,” he said proudly, “one of my methods is to put the name of each person concerned at the top of a sheet and put under that name all the facts we have. Here are five names of men who have been seen with Mrs. Darrold. The police have cleared each one of them. Mr. Darrold has been cleared also. Thus our Mr. X is obviously the man.”
“How do you go about ‘clearing’ someone? Take Mr. Darrold, for example.”
“Wait a moment. I can barely read my own writing. Ah yes. The home offices of the company he works for are in Barnston, fifty miles or so east of here. A Mr. Daniel Walker, bookkeeper at the home office, put Mr. Darrold on the Empire City headed east from Barnston at noon the day of the murder. Mr. Darrold could not possibly have returned here to kill his wife in the time allowed.”
“And I suppose they checked at the other end of his trip?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Darrold was in Richfield that same evening, all right. No doubt about it.”
Chapter Seven
Mayla Baran
Really, she thought, Dan is getting to be a horrid bore. She lay on her side on the wide windowseat, her head cradled on her arm, a glass on the floor just under her hand. The windowseat was padded in white leather, with red cording. Mayla liked white and red. She was a small girl with very white skin. She had a petulant mouth, eyes set into her head at a roguish tip-tilt, hair the color of the heaviest cream.
She had a predatory quickness of movement, thin, greedy little fingers, and a trick of slowly widening her eyes whenever she looked at a man. Her tiny body was superbly fashioned, and she never sat, walked, stood or reclined without a definite attempt to display its most pleasing lines.
Yes, Dan was becoming definitely a bore. She watched him as he paced. He walked from the white fireplace over to the far red couch and back again. There was a disgusting stubble of beard on his jaw, and discolored pouches under his eyes. The hair, which usually was carefully combed to cover the maximum area of a balding head, was in disarray, and a lank lock fell almost to his cheekbone.
“For heaven’s sake, sit down!” she snapped, in her high, childish voice.
“Shut up, Angel,” he growled.
She pouted. There was one good way to take Dan’s mind off his troubles. She said, “Today I’m going to order the terrace furniture.”
He whirled on her. “Angel! What furniture? How much?”
“About three hundred dollars. That terrace stuff is battered, Dan. Horribly battered.”
He stood over her. His eyes were strange. He frightened her a little, as in the old days before she had found that he would obey a gesture or a whistle, like a well-trained dog.
“Angel,” he said. “Remember what I asked you last night?”
“That silly idea of yours?”
“It’s not so silly. Let’s sell all this stuff. Let’s get out of here. Let’s get out of this stinking town of Barnston and go places. Mexico, maybe. Guatemala.”
She narrowed her tilted eyes and her mouth turned hard. “Not the way you want it, brother. Not in the tourist court class. I’m not a hamburger and soda-pop gal. Don’t you know that by now?”