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.
The ticking of the clock seemed inordinately loud and insistent. Twenty-five minutes to eleven. They would be beginning to gather under the live oak at the cross-roads, relentless men, silent in their white hoods.
Even as they gathered, half a mile from the place of their assembling, Greel would be asleep in the little shack where he tried to teach the alphabet to men of his own color. He would be tired after his day’s work, reflected Courtnay, worn out in mind and body, for it must be a heart-breaking job. The hooded men would steal upon the cabin, surround it, order him to come out, and then...
Courtnay remembered Greel and the interview they had had. There was a deep gentleness and patience about the schoolmaster, but when Courtnay had ordered him, peremptorily, to close the school and go, there had been a light in Greel’s eye and he had held his head high as he had refused. Greel would fight...
Courtnay wished the clock would not tick so loudly. Twenty minutes to eleven. He had barely time to reach the cross-roads. But he did not start; he stood there in the library and his eyes were fastened on the paintings that hung there... his father, his great-uncle Carroll, his grandfather... honorable men...
Tick, tick, tick. They would be starting on their grim errand soon. They looked to him — to a Courtnay — to lead them. And still he stood staring into the eyes of his great-uncle Carroll who had died at Shiloh. Tick, tick, tick. Cater Courtnay straightened; in the hearth’s dying light he seemed very tall and erect. Then, all action now, he went from the library and the house, and with long, swift strides hurried through the heavy blackness of the night.
IV
It was just eleven. In the village the drowsy church clock announced the hour. Breathless, Cater Courtnay darted up to the door of Greel’s cabin. There was no light; he rapped with tense fists.
“Who’s there?”
The voice of the colored schoolmaster was firm, alert.
“I... Cater Courtnay... a friend—”
The door opened an inch.
“What do you want?”
“Quick!” Courtnay whispered. “Let me in. They’re coming to get you.”
The door opened wide enough to admit a man. By the embers on the hearth Courtnay saw that Greel was fully dressed, and that he held a pistol in his hand.
“You knew they were coming then?”
“Every night,” said Greel, “I wait like this.”
Courtnay’s words were swift, incisive.
“We must act quickly. They’ll be here in five minutes. They’ll murder you like a dog.”
“I’ll fight—”
“No use. They’re nine to one.”
Greel shrugged his shoulders; he kept his pistol leveled at Courtnay’s heart.
“You can’t talk me into giving up, Mr. Courtnay,” he said. “Go back and tell them they’ll never take me alive.”
“Don’t be a fool, Greel. You’d be no good dead. You’ve work to do — I didn’t come to betray you — I came to help you escape—”
“Too late,” said Greel.
“No. You’ve got a chance. Go now. Run down the path by Claymore creek; cross the footbridge; you can catch the midnight train as it goes through Bayardville—”
“No use; I’m too tired to run fast; they’d find the cabin empty; they’d follow and catch me; I’ll stay.”
“They won’t follow you—”
“Why?”
“Because they won’t find the cabin empty.”
Greel looked at Courtnay sharply.
“You mean—”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
Courtnay drew himself up.
“My grandfather — damn him — had a mulatto slave — damn him — damn him to Hell — my father had her blood in him — we’re black — damn him to Hell. But you’ve got to hurry.”
Greel looked out of the cabin door; a faint moon, just come out, showed far down the ribbon of road something white moving toward them.
“Go, Greel,” Courtnay whispered fiercely.
“But why should you do this?”
“Because I choose to. Now run.”
Greel moved toward the door.
“I don’t understand—” he said. “But I’m going to go. But before I go, there’s one thing I want to do—”
“Quick. What?”
“Shake hands with you.”
In the almost dark room the hand of Cater Courtnay and the negro schoolmaster met for an instant; then Greel slipped out into the night and disappeared in the tangle of weeds and underbrush through which the creek path ran.
Greel was across the footbridge when he heard through the night’s silence a hard, high voice call out: “Greel! Greel!”
Then he heard another voice, but not his own, call back:
“Yes? What do you want?”
The hard, high voice answered:
“We want you. Come out, Greel.”
No reply. Greel sped on through the night.
“Come out, Greel, do you hear?”
No reply. Other voices took up the cry.
“Come out, Greel. Come out, you black skunk. Come out, or we’ll come and get you out.”
Then as he ran, Greel heard a terrible voice that seemed to fill the whole night, cry: “Come get me, if you can, you white devils. I’ll show you how a nigger can die!”
He heard the staccato bark of shots.
Greel had come to a bend in the path; he was panting, but he felt he was safe now; he could see the lights of Bayardville not far off; he stopped to catch his breath. He looked back toward where he had come from. Against the brooding sky he saw the bloody orange-red of flames.
Middleman for Murder
Bruno Fischer
Bruno Fischer (1908–1992) was born in Berlin, Germany, and emigrated to the United States at the age of five, his family settling in New York City. He was educated at the Rand School of Social Sciences, which had been established by the Socialist Party in 1906 and closed in 1956 during Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist reign. Fischer became a sportswriter for the Long Island Daily Press (1929), then worked for the Socialist newsletter Labor Voice (1931–1932) before becoming the editor of the Socialist Call (1934–1936), the official weekly magazine of the Socialist Party. He went on to run for the New York State Senate on the Socialist Party ticket and retained his dedication to Jewish causes and socialism until the end of his life, spending his final summers at a socialist cooperative in Putnam County, New York.
As was true of most of the pulp writers whose names remain even slightly familiar more than a half century after the last pulp died, Fischer was a prodigiously prolific writer for numerous pulps, though many of them were not the first tier, with only a few sales to Black Mask and The Shadow, but numerous stories sold to Dime Mystery, 10-Story Detective, and Strange Detective Mysteries. In addition to his hundreds of stories, both under his own name and as Russell Gray, he wrote more than two dozen novels, several of which featured his brainy detective Ben Helm, said to have been modeled after Norman Thomas, the three-time Socialist presidential candidate.
“Middleman for Murder” was published in the November 1947 issue.
Poor Perry Pike! My old pal sure looked seedy — his hat battered, shoes scuffed, suit shabby. All Perry had was seventy grand in cold cash — too cold to touch!
Perry Pike wasn’t glad to see me. He was wearing his hat and topcoat when he answered my knock, and he just stood there and scowled. He had a good face for scowling. It was pinched at the cheeks and his thin mouth turned down easily when he was displeased about something.