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 cap was still on her head, but it was riding a little cock-eyed.
“This is murder, Miss Conklin, and the first thing to do is call the police.”
“I know exactly what to do, Mr. Shay,” she said. “Please don’t ask any questions now. Just come with me.”
We went out in the hall then and found Preacher Toomey still puttering around there. Miss Conklin said:
“Toomey, have there been any visitors?”
“Why no, Miss Conklin,” he told her. “Mr. Franks is here calling on Miss Lawrence, but that is all that I know of.”
“Is Mr. Lawrence in?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You haven’t been out, have you, Toomey? You’d surely know if there’s strangers here?”
“I’ve been here all afternoon, ma’am.”
“Noticed anything wrong?”
“Why no, ma’am.”
She told him that was all and we went back to the library. She said then, in a tired voice: “Well, I wanted to be sure. I’ll call the police now... It was possible somebody else had killed poor Mary, but now it’s surely someone in the house. Toomey would say if there’d been anybody else here.”
“Would he know for sure?”
She said: “If he knew this had happened, he’d have said that various unknown people had been in and out. Toomey is no fool, Mr. Shay; he would realize that he and everyone else in the house would be under immediate suspicion. Because of their past lives, you know.”
That made sense. Then there was a knock on the door and Toomey followed it, stopping just inside where he couldn’t see the dead girl’s body.
“Might I have a few words, Miss Conklin?”
She said he could. He looked at me and said: “Of course I know Mr. Shay is here investigating the robbery, Miss Conklin. I’d just like to say I know nothing about it. I want to tell both you and Mr. Shay that I’m innocent, that I’m leading a decent life.”
“I’m sure you are, Toomey,” she said. “But I’d like to know just how you knew about the robbery. I told no one.”
“Morse told me of it, ma’am. I’m sure I don’t know how she knew... She informed me it was confidential, but all of us seem to know of it.”
He bowed then and left, and Miss Conklin said: “I told no one about the robbery but George and his sister. Do you suppose one of them could have told poor Mary?”
I didn’t know the sister but I knew George, and the way he chased girls. And I knew that Mary had just adored being chased — and had never run very fast when pursued. And she’d still been a good-looking gal and young George had money. I got the answer right away, but I only said:
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I’ll call the police now,” she sighed. “I do wish this hadn’t happened. The police will certainly be most abrupt with my people — there’s nothing I can do to prevent it.”
I thought her using “abrupt” as a description of what the police would be with her collection of jailbirds was a miracle of understatement, but I let that go along with the other. She picked up the telephone and I wandered out in the hall.
Toomey was waiting for me. He beckoned me away from the door, and when I followed he said:
“Look, shamus! That’s gospel that I gave in there. I haven’t done a thing.”
“I believe you,” I said, “that’s the funny part of it. If it had been you, you’d have taken the bonds along with the dough. You’d have gone hook, line, and sinker — and left the town because you couldn’t take that along too. Okay! Now what?”
“I didn’t want you picking at me all the time, is all. Maybe I’m no lily, but I’m clear on this deal.”
“I get it, Preacher. You were holding off — waiting to get a chance at a real killing. Who’s this guy Franks you told Miss Conklin was here?”
“He’s the gal’s sweetie. He tags her all around. He comes here every day.”
“What kind of a guy is he?”
He shrugged. “She likes him. She’s going to marry him.”
I went back in the library and Miss Conklin hung up the phone and said: “The police tell me they will be here at once. Oh my goodness! The trouble my poor people will have.”
I grinned and she saw it. She said sharply: “Mr. Shay! These poor unfortunate victims of our society are entitled to decent treatment, once they have made penance. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be treated as any decent citizen should be. I want you to think of that.”
I thought of Preacher Toomey and the cutthroat that had driven us to the house — and the Lord knows what other specimens she had around — and said:
“You think of it, Miss Conklin. I’d as soon live in a cage with wild tigers as here.”
“That is very unfair,” she said.
I waved toward the desk that shielded the dead Mary Morse and said: “If Mary could talk, I’ll bet she wouldn’t agree with you.”
The cops came and there was merry hell to pay. They lined up the help and of all the collection I ever saw they won in a walk. They’d have made the average police line-up look like a meeting of the Ladies Aid. The chauffeur had served time in Dannemora and Joliet. One gardener had taken a course at McAlester, in Oklahoma, and a P.G. at Folsom, in California. The other one had graduated from Leavenworth, which is a Federal pen. The cook was an old gal who’d killed her husband with a frying pan and had done seven years for the trick. The two other maids were about in the dead Mary Morse’s class, though they didn’t own the looks she’d had.
And then there was young George Lawrence, who was a worthless bum if one ever walked. He was half drunk, and when he saw me he wanted to pick up the argument where we’d left it off two nights before.
The cops stopped him quick on that — telling him they’d do all the fighting necessary.
Franks, the Lawrence girl’s fiancé, was a thin-faced, dark young fellow. He seemed to be okay. I didn’t know anything about him, but I wondered how a honey like the Lawrence girl could go for him. She could have done better, with what she had to work with, which was practically everything it takes.
She was small and blonde, and had that wide-set appealing stare that makes you want to pick ’em up and cuddle ’em and tell ’em everything will be all right.
Nobody had any alibi — the cops found that out right away. Nobody had any notion about who didn’t like Mary Morse. Or said they hadn’t. And then I got a break. The cops were ganged up, talking to one of the gardeners, and Preacher Toomey caught my eye and beckoned me over to him. He said, so no one else could hear it:
“Listen, Shay! I’ll do you a favor and maybe you can do one back for me. The kid, young Georgie, was mixed up with the gal. She was clipping him for all the dough he could get his hands on.”
“You sure?”
“Certain. She bragged about it.”
“Did his aunt know about it?”
“Listen, Shay! If there’s one single, solitary thing goes on in this house that she don’t know about, I’ll put in with you. She’s so smart it’s painful.”
“Nuts!” I said. “If she was, she’d never have a bunch like she’s got here around her. Was the kid still playing around with the Morse dame?”
“Sure. But she was taking him for dough and he was sore about it. He beat the hell out of her three weeks ago... His aunt kept her from calling the cops in on it. That’ll give you an idea of how much she knows about it. You going to tell the cops?”
“Why don’t you?”
He said gloomily: “That’d make ’em think I was trying to pass the buck to somebody else. The best thing I can do is keep my mouth shut.”