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.
“Now, have you got all that? I hope you have for your own sake, because you won’t be seeing me around much from now on.”
“Would you mind waiting in here a few moments?” the detective who had ushered her in asked Mrs. Ranger politely. “They’ll be ready for you in the D.A.’s office in just a minute or two.” He drew out a chair for her.
She sat down in it with a poor grace. “You know, this is really becoming a nuisance. I don’t mind cooperating all I can, but this is the third time I’ve been sent for by you people.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Ranger,” the detective said deferentially. “I’m sure this is the last time you’ll be troubled, before the case goes to court.” He moved toward the door. “You don’t mind if I ask you not to touch that little lever there on the table in front of you while you’re in here — it’s a dictaphone leading into the next room, where suspects are sometimes interviewed. I’m not supposed to bring anyone in here, but seeing it’s you, Mrs. Ranger...”
She smiled faintly, mollified. He closed the door discreetly after him and she could hear his heavy tread recede down the corridor outside.
She reached out and snapped the lever defiantly, as if to say: “Just for that, I will!” A faint buzzing, like a fly trapped in a bottle, sounded. She picked up the head-set and gingerly brought it around to the back of her head, careful not to disturb her modish hat.
A gruff voice said in her ears: “What do you want now, Swanson? You have been beefin’ all week long to be let in here to talk to me. All right, out with it.”
Mrs. Ranger changed her original intention of immediately discarding the head-set; brought it in closer around the base of her skull.
“There is still one person who can tell you I was in my own flat that Wednesday night Ranger was killed. Please let me get in touch with him, that’s all I ask you!”
“Yeah? Who is he?”
“He’s an old friend of my wife and mine, an old Swedish doctor named Carl Lindquist. He was up there that night; we asked Dr. Meredith to call him in in consultation, just to make sure there was no mistake about the kid’s condition. We’ve known Lindquist so long, we knew if he told us, it must be true.”
“Yeah? Well, then, why didn’t he show up before now and speak up for you, if he’s such a good friend of yours?”
“He went to St. Paul right after that; he probably hasn’t heard about it out there. He only reads Swedish newspapers, anyway. He’s slow and kind of old-fashioned, you know; dresses sloppy in baggy clothes; can’t see so good any more, wears thick glasses; and he’s got a little white billy-goat beard stuck on the point of his chin. But I know that if he hears I’m in trouble he’ll take the first train east and do all he can to square me. He’ll tell you; he’ll be able to tell you that I was home minding my business that night. He even stayed on with us, after Doc Meredith left, talking over ways in which I might be able to raise the money to help my youngster.”
“All right, all right, can the sob stuff. So what do you want us to do?”
“Just let me send him a wire; that’s all I ask.”
The heavy tread was returning along the corridor once more. Mrs. Ranger deftly replaced the head-set on the table before her, pushed the lever down.
The door opened and the detective who had originally shown her in said, “They’re ready for you at the D.A.’s office now, Mrs. Ranger. Sorry you had to wait like this.”
“That’s all right,” she said vaguely, as though she were thinking of something else entirely.
“Hundred and Twanny-fif’ Strit!” the conductor whined dolefully down the aisle of the lounge car from the vestibule entrance. The nearsighted old doctor with the white goatee and thick-lensed spectacles glanced up indifferently as the Twentieth Century began to slow up, flush with the upper stories of the below-track-level Park Avenue tenements that marked its next-to-last stop — 125th Street. Then he resumed peering at the St. Paul Swedish newspaper he had been occupied with ever since he had got aboard — one stop before, at Harmon-on-the-Hudson, where inbound trains halt to change from coal-burning to electricity-driven locomotives.
The train came to a full halt. It seemed to linger a little longer than usual at this penultimate stop. Then a darky porter from one of the Pullmans appeared in the vestibule, pointed to the old doctor reading the Swedish newspaper. A well-dressed heavy-set man in his late thirties pushed past him with a muttered “Thanks a lot,” came on down the aisle, stopped opposite the reader’s seat. He had to tap him on the shoulder to attract his attention.
“Are you Dr. Carl Lindquist, of St. Paul, Minnesota?”
The old fossil peered at him over the tops of his glasses. “Yuss. Vhy, who are you?”
The intruder tactfully lowered his voice so that it would not reach the others in the car. “I’m from Police Headquarters. I was sent to meet you at the train, ask you to get off here with me, instead of riding on down to Grand Central.”
The old Swedish doctor looked innocently apprehensive. “I am not under arrest, no?”
The detective laughed outright at this. “No, no, nothing like that. The D.A. would like to question you privately, that’s all. I’m just delegated as sort of an escort to take you to him. By leaving the train here, there won’t be any unwelcome publicity to your arrival, no nosy newspapermen to buck. I have an official car waiting for us downstairs. Better get your things, if you don’t mind; they’re holding up the train for us.”
“All right, I yust as soon,” Lindquist said willingly. “I ache all over from riding on this train so long, anyway.” He struggled to his feet, pulled down a ponderous, battered-looking case from the rack overhead. The detective obligingly took it from him, started down the aisle with it, swaying from its weight. Lindquist waddled flat-footedly after him.
As he passed the Pullman porter who had pointed him out to the official envoy, he slipped something into his hand, as though this service had been prearranged between them. He alighted on the station platform beside his escort.
“Now, no offense,” the Headquarters man said, “but have you got some proof of your identity on you; can you show me some credentials, before we go any further? Your name and description tally, but still I don’t want to show up with the wrong man; it might cost me my job.”
The doctor fumbled about his balloon-like clothes. “I ain’t got much,” he said, pursing his lips. “Just a couple of unpaid bills, maybe. Vait, here’s the telegram from my friend, vhat brought me back here.” He stripped it out of the envelope, passed it to him.
The detective unfolded it, read:
“DR. CARL LINDQUIST
______________
ST. PAUL, MINN.
“PLEASE COME QUICKLY AM IN JAIL ACCUSED OF MURDER AND YOUR EVIDENCE CAN CLEAR ME.