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.
Chapter Four
Blood from a Turnip
I went out, opened the door and returned with the Postal Union boy Sackler had sent out three-quarters of an hour before. I led him into the living-room. He stood before Sackler, thrust his hand into his hip pocket and pulled out a thick roll of bills.
The boy began to count aloud. I was seized with a sudden cold suspicion that Sackler had somehow contrived to get his twenty-five hundred bucks after all. I remembered, abruptly and without satisfaction, that I still hadn’t retrieved my thirty-three.
Wolley gaped at the mounting money on the desk. Envy, frank and hostile, was in his gaze.
“Great God,” he said, “is this a murder case or a private business deal?”
Sackler didn’t answer him. He was gazing at the stack of bills with an ethereal light in his eyes. The Postal Union lad laid a final fifty on top of the pile, announced: “Twenty-five hundred and fifty. That’s right, isn’t it?”
That, as I knew too well, was absolutely right. To the penny. Sackler took a worn leather change purse from his pocket and handed the boy a dime. He was impervious to the look of scorn he received in exchange. The messenger left the room and Sackler stood up, stowing the bills away in his pocket like a hophead who has just come upon a mountain of cocaine.
He walked into the foyer and called back over his shoulder: “Hey, Joey.”
I went along, not having the slightest idea what he wanted. I could almost feel Wolley’s outraged glare on my back.
“Joey,” said Sackler in a whisper, “within the next three minutes sneak out of the room on some pretext. Go upstairs to the attic. The third door on the right at the head of the stairway. There’s a transom there. Half open. Throw this over it into the room.”
He handed me a sealed envelope. There was something small, hard and heavy inside it. I put it in my pocket without asking questions. By the time I returned to the living-room, I began to have vague visions of getting back my thirty-three bucks.
“Do you mind telling me,” said Wolley, restraining his wrath with a noticeable effort, “what the hell is going on here? Damn it, Rex, in the name of the law, I demand to know who your murderer is. You’re obstructing justice.”
Sackler nodded frantically to me. I murmured something about going to the bathroom and slid out of the room. I raced upstairs to the attic. I stood for a moment before the door Sackler had designated, listening. Then I tossed the envelope over the transom. I heard the metallic click as it hit the floor within; then I heard a sigh and a shuffling footstep. I scooted back down the stairs.
When I got back to the living-room, Wolley was pounding the table savagely. His voice roared against the tapestried walls and reverberated back again. He threatened Sackler with decades of imprisonment for obstructing justice. He accused him of being an accessory after the fact of murder for withholding evidence. Sackler sat there in uncomfortable silence till he saw me. Then he brightened.
“All right, Joey?” he shouted above the noise of Wolley’s voice.
I nodded my head. “Shut up, Inspector,” said Sackler. “I’ll give you your killer.”
Wolley shut up for a moment, breathless. He inhaled quickly and said: “Who is it?”
“Colby,” said Sackler. “Granville S. Colby. Embezzler of his clients’ trust funds. Murderer. Kidnaper and a consorter with a forger. There’s your man.”
“Colby!” yelled Wolley. “Where is he? He was here this morning. Search the house. My God, perhaps he got away. Perhaps he—”
The shot sounded through the house like a fragment of thunder. Benny sat up in his chair. Wolley froze where he stood and Crosher looked more afraid than ever. Sackler stood up. He pointed at the clock.
“The time,” he yelled. “Note the time. I want witnesses. It’s exactly three twenty-eight. Look!”
We all looked at the clock.
“Come on,” yelled Wolley. “Let’s investigate that shot. It was upstairs.”
I caught Sackler’s eye. “It seemed to me to come from the attic,” I said.
Wolley grabbed Benny before he raced up the stairs. He was taking no chances on losing one of his prisoners. The rest of us followed him to the attic.
There was a smell of cordite coming over the transom through which I had thrown Sackler’s envelope. Wolley tried the door. It had a mortised lock which had been secured. He handed Benny over to me, and smashed his broad shoulder against the door. At the second thrust, the lock gave.
The five of us catapulted into the room. “My God,” said Wolley. “I bet you were right, Rex. Look at that!”
I didn’t have to look. I knew quite well what was there on the floor. It was Colby. Colby with a revolver in his hand, a bullet in his brain. A trickle of blood stained the dusty boards at our feet. Crumpled and lying across the room was the envelope I had brought upstairs a moment before.
Wolley looked at the body closely, then turned around and examined the door.
“Say,” he said. “There’s no key here. If he locked himself in here where’s the key? Say, don’t tell me this isn’t a suicide either.”
Rex Sackler heaved a profound sigh.
“This one’s a suicide,” he said. “I personally guarantee it.”
Wolley went pounding down the stairs again to the telephone. Crosher, Sackler and I followed leisurely. I was holding on to Benny’s arm and I could feel him trembling. We arrived on the ground floor as Wolley completed his call to headquarters.
“Rex,” he said, “there’s still some things I don’t understand. First about Rawson. Are you sure Colby killed him, too?”
“That’s the first thing I was sure of,” said Sackler. “That’s what started my whole train of thought. Once I decided Colby had killed Rawson, it was easy to figure the rest.”
“But how, Rex? How?”
Wolley was almost respectful now.
“Colby was a chain smoker. Do you remember? He’d light one butt from the end of the other. Last night when I asked him for a cigarette he patted his coat pockets and told me his case was in his overcoat. It was. I got it out myself.”
“So?”
“Yet Colby swore he wasn’t out of the house last night. A chain smoker like that doesn’t keep butts in his overcoat so he’s got to go out to the hall closet every time he wants a smoke. But if he went outside, he would put them in his overcoat. That’s just what Colby did. He undoubtedly lit a cigarette after he killed Rawson and he hadn’t finished smoking it when I borrowed one from him.”
“Borrowed,” I said. “Very funny.”
But Sackler was so pleased with himself he didn’t even glare at me. However, I didn’t much care. Sackler’s play was over. I still had a little something up my sleeve.
“Well,” asked Wolley, “why the hell didn’t he get Benny out of here when the job was done?”
“He didn’t know Rawson had called me in. He didn’t expect the police to question the suicide theory. But the servants may have mentioned Benny and it’d look funny if he wasn’t on the spot, since he’d been staying here for three weeks as Colby’s clerk. You see how simple they made it? Living here in Capek’s house, holding him a prisoner on his own estate, who’d ever suspect them?”
“And the dough?” said Wolley. “What about the dough that boy brought you?”
“Oh, that,” said Sackler, as if he’d never given it a second thought. “Just a little personal matter.”
I drove the coupe for a good five miles before I opened up. Then I said, very casually: “It’d be a good idea if you got rid of that key before we got back to town. Wolley might start thinking and figure out the whole deal.”