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.
At the entrance to the main room just inside the grilled iron doors, Detective Conley was sitting behind a small palm, watching each newcomer. Four men were posted in other places around the room, unknown to any one but Conley and Carmen Ryan.
They mingled with the guests, chatting as affably as though they were part of the reception. Messenger boys rushed in with telegrams of congratulations, and new floral pieces were being added to the masses of blossoms along the walls.
At ten minutes to twelve, a glittering truck drew up in front of the entrance and unloaded a mass of roses built on a small platform mounted on iron casters. Four men carried it carefully up the stairs, wheeled it through the grilled iron doors and placed it in the center along one of the walls.
A gasp of admiration went up from the assembled guests as one of the attendants pushed a wall socket, and a glitter of colored incandescents flashed out from the mass of roses. They were of the deepest red, and were so placed as to make the entire piece resemble a huge blood-red rosebud.
A small card was fastened to one corner. It read:
“Good luck. Hope you get yours. You deserve it!”
A small gong struck the hour of midnight, and with the last stroke the brilliant lights faded out, to be replaced with soft reflections from the coves which ran around the walls just under the ceiling. They were of different colors, changing from rose and lavender to amber and gold in soft lambent waves.
The orchestra started playing softly, and a strange hush came over the crowd which had been so noisy but a moment before. From the four corners of the room shafts of colored lights shot out, and focused on the very center of the polished floor. The beat of the muffled drums sounded like tom-toms from deep in some savage forest, mingling with the barbaric cadences of the muted instruments.
Another gasp went up from the crowd as the center of the floor opened upward and a silver and gold fountain came into view. Streams of water splashed against the sparkling crystal which formed the lesser ornaments, and changed to cascades of leaping fire as the vari-colored lights played upon their revolving facets.
The beat of the tom-toms became louder as the orchestra was heard playing some wild song of the desert. From above, a brilliant floodlight of amber suddenly cast its glow upon the large figure in the very center of the fountain, and breaths were held as the semi-nude goddess became a woman of living gold.
For just an instant she poised on the lip of the fountain shell, and then leaped lightly to the floor. As the lights from the four corners followed her, she began a slow dance to the strains of the half-savage music, which seemed to blend with the shades of colored lights, and made them seem like a part of the very air.
The crowd grew tense as the strange witchery of sound and light crept into their blood. Hearts pounded and hands clenched with passion as the desire to become primitive cast its insinuating spell upon them.
Not a sound was heard as the music went on, and that silent, beautiful figure of gold gyrated maddeningly before them; no sounds except the raking intake of breath in bodies reverting to the abysmal.
Like a wild creature of the forests the dancer began to move in a creeping glide that carried her ever nearer to the tinkling fountain, and then, in one crashing crescendo from the orchestra hidden in the shifting shadows, she leaped onto the fountain and froze into statuesque immobility.
Before the crowd could relax, a staccato blur of shots rang out from the center of the farthest wall, and as the spitful orange flames cut the semilighted shadows of color, the statue toppled from her pedestal and fell into the shallow water with a sodden splash.
At the same instant the lights went on, and from five different places in the crowded room, a fusillade of shots was directed toward the huge bouquet of deep red roses. The hidden lights were shot out, and clipped roses flew from the frame as the bullets from the guns of the detectives chopped their way into the heart of that massive rosebud.
The crowd stood still, holding their breaths with the surprise of it all, wondering whether it were a part of the entertainment, or whether some new debt of gangdom were being paid.
From behind the grilled doors Dan Conley came in at a crouching run, his gun held at his side as he approached that mutilated offering of roses.
From the far end of the room came the orchestra, spread out fan-wise as every man held a rod ready before him. In the center of the room a dripping figure was climbing out of the splashing fountain, and then the fountain sank again below the level of the floor, as the dancer disappeared behind a group of palms.
Conley and his men ripped the large floral rose to shreds, and deep in the heart of that token of love and good wishes they found nothing — except six brass shells from an automatic, and the rubber print of a woman’s shoe!
Again the waiters took up their task of serving the crowd, and again the orchestra played the latest number for the dance. The spell had passed, and the crowd was once again occupied with the business of having a good time in their separate ways.
Behind the palm by the grilled doors Conley sat with Trent, trying to figure out where he had slipped. He felt sure that he could not be wrong, and he was glad that he had insisted that Carmen wear the thin suit of gilded chain armor for her dance. It cost plenty to get that costume, but if they had trapped the murderer it would have been worth it. Even at that, her body would wear the bruises of those bullets for weeks.
From behind the orchestra came a brilliant figure clad in a gown of deepest red that accentuated the contours of her flawless figure with artistic perfection. The only relief to that deep rosebud red was a narrow trimming of black around the bodice.
“Carmen!” The crowd shouted the one word.
She held up her hand for silence, as she reached the exact spot where the fountain had been. And strangely enough, she faced the mutilated rosebud of roses.
“Thank you all,” she said simply. “I hope you liked the show. It is not over yet, but it will soon be finished.”
She crouched as she spoke, her eyes never leaving that emblem of love along the wall. Without warning, the flood-lights from two corners of the room were focused on that shattered token, and the crowd missed the lightning move of the dancer in the center of the room.
Her right hand flashed to her leg, and came away spitting blood-colored flashes of flame into the heart of that huge rosebud. A figure seemed to emerge from the heart of the rose, and sagged through the crushed flower, to drop on the polished floor.
The crowd gasped. A messenger boy!
Detective Conley started as he turned over the still figure, and closed the glazing eyes. Then he pushed back the small uniform cap and disclosed the blond mannish bob of — “Clerical Clara!”
“I saw a messenger boy when the lights went out!” he muttered half to himself.
“I saw a footprint,” said Carmen. “I knew she wouldn’t resist trying it again. We wouldn’t be looking for it. And now the devil has a dam’ good bookkeeper to keep his records straight.”
Black Legion
Lars Anderson
Costumed heroes in the pulp era were pretty thick on the ground, largely due to the enormous success of the Shadow, who was soon followed by crime-fighters using sobriquets that made them sound more villainous than heroic: Doc Savage, The Spider, The Phantom, The Whisperer, The Ghost, The Black Bat. What was decidedly unusual was a female masked avenger. The Domino Lady in her real life was Ellen Patrick, a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old who swore vengeance on criminals after her father was murdered. She has curly blond hair, penetrating brown eyes, is tall, and has a stunning figure. Her modus operandi generally finds her at a party or social gathering in a thin, low-cut, backless dress that clings to her every curve. When she discovers the item that she came to steal from her adversary, she slips into a bedroom or closet, peels off her dress and dons another one (both dresses so gossamer that they fit in a small handbag), puts on a mask, and returns to the party. Her disguise apparently works, just as Clark Kent’s removal of his glasses appears to make him unrecognizable. When successful, she leaves a card bearing the inscription: “Compliments of The Domino Lady.” There were only six stories about her, five of which appeared in Saucy Romantic Adventures and one in Mystery Adventure Magazine. Little is known of the author, whose career appears to have lasted only about four years (1935–1938), and all of whose stories were published in the second-level pulps.