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 Duchess Pulls a Fast One” first appeared in the September 19, 1936, issue of DFW.
Katie Blayne’s Bluff Forces a Mysterious Insurance Murderer into the Open
The three of us, Spike and Katie Blayne and I, were alone in the City Hall press room. It was six thirty of a dark and rainy evening. I’d just taken over the beat from Spike, for the Telegram, and Katie was waiting for the Sun’s night police reporter to come on the job.
“Duchess,” Spike Kaylor beefed, “why don’t you scram out of here and go home?”
“Spike, why don’t you give yourself up?” the Duchess retorted, smiling.
“Pinky, doesn’t she get in your hair the way she hangs around and hangs around, all the time?” Spike persisted.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be drawn into their quarrel which, for seven months, had kept the press room on pins and needles. In the first place, Spike Kaylor is my best friend. And in the second place, Katie Blayne — well, never mind about Katie Blayne.
The fire alarm gong tapped out 236. Spike strode over to the card tacked on the bulletin board. “Fifth and Chesnut.” He looked more cheerful. “Our City Hall apparatus will roll on the deuce.”
“And you, dear little boys, I suppose, will take a ride on the big old fire engine,” Katie jeered. “Won’t that be just ducky!”
“Well,” I said, “it’s some consolation to be able to do something that you can’t do.”
Katie’s blue eyes twinkled. “Maybe you think I can’t.”
“Skip it,” I said. “You’re not going kiting around on any fire truck. Not the way these lunatics drive.”
At that instant the second alarm clanged in. “There’s the deuce!” Spike shouted, and leaped toward the door.
I was on his heels and I realized, unhappily, that Katie was on mine. We tore down the corridor and into the fire house. The big pumper was just starting to roll. The three of us caught the hand rail and swung onto the running board. Two firemen up beside the driver looked back and yelled at Katie. The roar of the powerful engines drowned their words and the Duchess looked the other way.
As the pumper turned into the street with a breath-taking skid and roared away with bell clanging and siren wailing, Katie swayed toward me and shouted happily: “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
“It’s just the little girl in you,” I growled.
We saw the red glow in the sky while we were still blocks away from the fire. Huge clouds of yellow smoke were rolling upward.
“Kurt Bergstrom’s chemical plant is at Fourth and Chesnut,” I yelled.
“Fine!” Spike shouted. “And if Bergstrom is going up in smoke with his chemicals, I’ll buy the drinks.”
Which is the way most newspaper men feel about Kurt Bergstrom. The head of the Bergstrom Chemical Company is an inventor, a nationally known chemist, a man of wealth and substance. But! He’ll stool to any gag, short of murder, to get his name in the papers. And reporters do not like publicity hounds.
The pumper pulled up a block from the fire. Katie and Spike and I piled off and started down the street as one of the firemen yelled: “Hey, Duchess! Next time you want to go to a fire, hire a cab!”
“Thanks for the buggy ride,” Katie called sweetly, and blew him a kiss.
The fire, we discovered with some disappointment, was confined to the north wing of the two-story brick building. It was evidently already under control, despite the billowing clouds of acrid smoke which rolled out of the shattered windows.
“Not much to this,” I remarked.
Then we saw an elderly man talking excitedly to Battalion Chief Murphy. We pegged him for the night watchman and ran over.
“He was in the chem lab in the north wing when I come on at six,” the old man was saying. “He was alone, workin’ on some experiment. I goes over the plant and I’m down in my room makin’ some coffee, when I smell smoke. That’s about a half hour later. I runs upstairs and the whole chem lab is in flames. I never seen him go out. His car’s right there in front of the office where he parked it, but he ain’t nowheres around.”
“Who?” Spike bellowed. “Who?”
The watchman blinked at us. “Mr. Hamlin. Mr. John Hamlin. He’s Mr. Bergstrom’s assistant in the lab.”
Chief Murphy grunted. “Well, we’ll find out if he’s in there in a few minutes. I’ll send in a couple of men with gas masks.”
A little later they found the body, or what was left of it. They didn’t even try to carry it out. They left that grisly job to the coroner. In the confined space of the laboratory the heat had been intense.
We cleaned up as many angles of the story as we could and then Spike called a cab. The Duchess, as usual, was right on our heels. She climbed into the taxi with us and sat down calmly between Spike and me.
Spike stared straight ahead as the cab pulled away from the curb. “My nose tells me it’s still with us,” he commented acidly.
“My Christmas Night perfume,” Katie said blandly. “Don’t you adore it?”
“I’d adore to drop you down a manhole,” Spike groused.
She let that pass. “Are you by any chance going to the Hotel Drake?” she asked. “Because if you are, I’ll go with you and we’ll interview Kurt Bergstrom together.”
Spike groaned, but didn’t argue.
The clerk at the Drake directed us to the dining room and the head waiter told us Bergstrom was eating alone in the south alcove. Spike started off, then checked himself. A cagey look came into his eyes as he asked casually: “How long has Mr. Bergstrom been in the dining room?”
“Since a little after six, sir.”
As we paraded through the room, a bit damp and sooty and bedraggled, Katie asked:
“Now what was the occasion for that question?”
“Did you ever hear, my little cabbage, of the crime called arson?”
“Yes,” Katie said promptly, “and I’ve also heard of the crime called murder. But if you’re thinking of them in connection with Kurt Bergstrom, you’d best forget them. Mr. Bergstrom is a wealthy man. He had no reason to stoop to arson, much less to murder.”
“That mugg would stoop to anything to get his name in the papers.”
Bergstrom rose when he saw us coming. He was a heavy-set chap of fifty, with very pink cheeks, keen blue eyes and close-clipped blond hair.
“Goot evening, gentlemen. Goot evening, Miss Blayne.” He knew every reporter in the city. “There is something I can do for you?”
“There sure is,” Spike said. “Who is John Hamlin?”
“Hamlin is my assistant in the laboratory.”
“Not any more he isn’t your assistant.” Spike never beat around the bush. “The north wing of your plant was just gutted by fire. Hamlin was burned to death, or so the watchman believes. Anyway, the firemen found a body in the lab. Hamlin’s car is out in front but Hamlin is missing.”
Bergstrom took it calmly but that didn’t prove anything. He’s the type who never shows emotion.
“Now about this man Hamlin,” Spike hurried on. “Was he married?”
“Yes. He lived with his wife at 17 Bay Terrace.”