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.
Grumpily he reopened the drawer, examined the bottle’s liquor level over the top of his glasses and handed it to me. He watched suspiciously as I raised it to my lips and said: “O.K. That’s enough,” before I even downed the first swallow. I handed it back after the second.
“If you’re going to get me up at four in the morning to break your cases,” I said, “you’ve got to keep me awake.”
He fumbled a dead cigar from his ashtray, dusted it off and popped it in his mouth. “O.K. Spill your story.”
“Not yet. I’ve got it figured out, but we have to prove it. I’ve no urge to be sued.”
“Oh,” he said. “You got a theory.”
“Sure. What have you got?”
“Nothing,” he admitted. “I’m listening.”
“This is what I want. You have Marden Swope, Mrs. Swope and Marie Kincaid picked up separately and brought here. Keep them apart and I’ll talk to them one at a time.”
He eyed me fixedly over his glasses. “What do I pick them up on?”
I waved that aside impatiently. “That’s your problem. If you’re leary of warrants, lure them down. Tell ’em the jail’s on fire and you need a bucket brigade. Tell them anything.” Then I remembered something. “Swope was coming in anyway, to identify Longstreet. He suggested your prisoner might be someone else.”
Day snapped erect. “He what!”
“Don’t get excited. Just a screwy idea he had. It’s Longstreet, all right.”
He leaned back in his chair again. “And when all these people get here?”
“I’ll talk to them.”
He scratched his head. “Knowing how you like to grandstand, I don’t suppose you’d outline your case first?”
“Don’t suppose I would.”
“O.K.,” he said wearily. “What can I lose? I haven’t got a case anyway.”
He picked up his phone, gave the necessary orders and we sat back to wait.
Inspector Day sent out for sandwiches and coffee after pointedly informing me that my share of the bill would be thirty-five cents, and collecting it before he ordered. We had just finished our uninspiring lunch when Hannegan stuck his head in the door.
“They’re all here,” he said.
“Separate?” I asked.
“None of them even know the others are here.”
“Send in Mrs. Swope,” I ordered.
Hannegan looked at Day, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m just a figurehead around here,” the inspector said bitterly. “Don’t pay any attention to me.”
The lieutenant shrugged, started to smile and wiped it off fast when Day roared: “Get a move on!”
“Yes sir,” he said, and backed out hurriedly.
“See what happens when I let you give orders?” Day asked aggrievedly. “Discipline shot to hell!” He rubbed his bald spot and mumbled: “Impertinent pup.”
“He didn’t say a word,” I said in Hannegan’s defense.
The inspector snapped, “I know what he was thinking!”
A knock sounded. Day growled, “Come in,” and Hannegan opened the door nervously.
He stepped aside to let in Mrs. Swope, then asked the space between Day and me if we wanted him to remain. It was impossible to determine which of us he was addressing.
I nodded imperceptibly and Day said: “You can stay if you keep your mouth shut.”
Mrs. Swope waited uncertainly, kneading her hands together and looking frightened. I introduced her to the inspector and asked her to have a chair. She looked around hesitantly, finally deciding on the one farthest from Warren Day’s desk. I walked over and looked down at her.
“Ever hear of truth serum, Mrs. Swope?” I asked.
She looked puzzled, then nodded doubtfully.
“We gave it to Longstreet, and his locket couldn’t help. He told us all about it.”
I might have told her that the world would end in five minutes. She turned paper white and clutched at her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No.”
“Don’t hold it against him, Mrs. Swope. He meant to keep his oath, but you can’t fight truth serum. He had to tell.” I made my voice sympathetic.
She asked in a dead voice: “Everything?”
I played the hunch on which my whole case was based, holding my breath as I played it, because if I were wrong, Mrs. Swope would know my whole attack was bluff.
I said: “Even that you were the girl who gave him the locket twenty-seven years ago.”
It worked. The shock of it, superimposed on the shock of Longstreet breaking his oath, nearly heaped her on the floor in a faint. She managed to retain consciousness, but all resistance was knocked out of her. The hopeless eyes she turned up at me were utterly convinced I knew everything.
“What do you want of me?” she asked.
“We just want you to clear up a point or two. How you learned of the plot, for example.”
She was too far gone for suspicion, but she said in dull surprise: “Didn’t Willard tell that?”
“We didn’t ask him,” I said easily. “It’s not an important point. We know you warned him, after making him swear on the locket he’d never tell. We know why you warned him... That you couldn’t bear to see an old sweetheart framed, even though your husband was the framer...”
“Framed?” she asked wonderingly. “I didn’t know it was a frame-up when I told Willard.”
“I was merely using a figure of speech,” I rapidly backtracked. “You see, we know enough of the story so that we have already arrested your husband. He’s beyond all possible help, so you have nothing to lose by telling us how you learned the plot.”
Her head drooped and she gazed helplessly down at her hands. “I overheard them in Marden’s office.”
“Overheard who?”
“Marden and Miss Kincaid. It was a week ago. I dropped in to see Marden, and Miss Kincaid was in his office. The door was open a crack and I stopped to listen. I don’t know why, because I’m not a suspicious woman. After listening, I thought it best Marden not suspect I had heard, so I left without going in.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard Miss Kincaid say: ‘Suppose at the last minute Longstreet changes his mind about going to the camp?’ Marden said: ‘I thought of that. Anton will tail him when he leaves the office at noon. If he looks like changing his mind, Anton has orders to stick a gun in his ribs and make sure he’s at camp by four at the latest.’ ”
I suddenly understood a lot of things which had not previously been clear. “How’d you know what they were talking about?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” Mrs. Swope said dully. “If I’d had any idea...” Her voice faded away for a minute, then went on: “I’d have spoken to Marden. I’d...” She looked up at me helplessly. “I don’t know what I’d have done. I didn’t know what it all meant, and I kept brooding about it until I was nearly sick, and it got closer and closer to the time, and finally the actual morning arrived without my doing anything about it, and I couldn’t stand it any more so I went to the office and told Willard just before he left at noon.”
She began to cry, making no sound, but with her shoulders jiggling up and down in jerky rhythm as tears slid across her face.
I said to Hannegan: “Got all that?”
He looked up from the notebook in which he had been unobtrusively writing during the entire interview. “Yeah. Got it all.”
“Have someone type it up in the form of a statement for Mrs. Swope to sign. And while it’s being typed, bring in Marden Swope. Get Longstreet from his cell too.”
He said: “Check,” rose from his chair and escorted Mrs. Swope from the room.
As the door closed behind them, Warren Day burst out: “What in hell’s going on? All that nonsense about truth serum!”
I grinned at him. “Worked, didn’t it?”