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.
Sweet and Dennis had caught me offguard. I didn’t know what my face had revealed to the man who had touched my arm.
He was a head taller than I, a jolly, well-fed young man with pink smiling cheeks and a stare that took me apart.
“I’m John Paige, Father Orion’s secretary, Brother. I’ve never seen you before, have I?”
I shook my head and mumbled: “I was hoping you’d know me. Will Father Orion know me?”
The hand he put to my elbow wore a curious jade ring. His manner was cheerfully confident. “This way, Brother. Father Orion knows all Truth.”
Dennis and Sweet were still watching as we walked away. I was in a sweat as to whether they’d hail me, and in another sweat as to whether they’d follow us.
“Everything went blank...” I mumbled to Paige.
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly. “But Father Orion has the light. Here’s the car, Brother.”
At least Father Orion gave the faithful good taxi service. Paige stowed me into the front seat of a big blue Cadillac sedan and we rolled away. I tried to see if we were being followed and had no luck. But those two flat-feet from Headquarters would at least get the license number.
“How long have you followed the Master?” Paige inquired.
“There’s a... a wall in my mind,” I said forlornly. “In Chicago all I could remember was the name of Father Orion. I asked the police and — and they put me on the airplane.”
“Quite right,” Paige approved. “Strangers might have taken advantage of you. Remember any more now?”
“No.” And I groaned: “It’s terrible being like this!”
Paige dropped his hand on my arm. “You’re with friends, Brother. Perhaps we’d better make sure you haven’t any identifying papers on you. Let’s see your billfold.”
He parked at the curb, and I let him have the billfold and watched closely while he looked inside. Paige whistled softly at the hundreds and five hundreds Brophy had reluctantly turned over to me.
“A lot of money to be carrying around, Brother.”
“There was more,” says I vaguely. “The safe deposit box was almost full. I think I always keep money ready in the deposit box. But I... I can’t remember where the box is. Will Father Orion tell me?”
“The Master knows all Truth,” Paige stated. “Were you bringing this money, Brother, as a Love Offering?”
“I can’t remember,” I told him helplessly as I reached for the billfold.
So there we were without any secrets, as we rolled into the high wooded hills beyond Hollywood...
Lew Ryster had prepared me for Orion’s Shrine. But Lew hadn’t told all. Maybe Lew wouldn’t have believed it himself. A side road led us to stone gate towers flanked by a high, close-meshed fence topped by strands of barbed wire.
“The top wire is electrified,” Paige remarked casually as we paused in the glare of floodlights on the gate posts.
A guard unchained the gates and, as we rolled through, called: “Welcome, Brothers!”
And I gandered at the fellow and moved up another notch on the Hollywood nut tree. That big guard wore sandals on bare feet and a white cloak resembling a Roman toga. He had a curly brown beard and the bulging muscles and build of a ham wrestler. And the air of a wild-eyed fanatic.
The whole lay-out was getting a little more unbelievable as I came closer to Father Orion.
“Electricity?” I mumbled.
“Lots of electricity, Brother,” Paige assured me cheerfully.
“But... but—”
“The Shrine, Brother, is guarded from desecration by all unbelievers and scoffers.” Paige delivered the statement with a solemn manner and a deeper voice.
I said: “Ahhhh...”
Paige said nothing. The silhouette of his face was sterner, as if his manner at the station had been for the outside world.
There was nothing screwball about the muscles of that guard at the gate and the electrified fence. It made you wonder what would happen if Father Orion decided not to like a pilgrim. The eight grand cash inside my coat was folding money in any language. And if there did just happen to be murder in the background and Mike Harris stubbed his toe and got in bad — then what?
I’d have felt better with a gun tucked under my armpit or inside my shirt. But it wouldn’t have looked kosher for Brother Amnesia to show up packing a rod. So I sat watchful and wary as we rolled up the winding driveway to the Shrine.
Here were broad smooth lawns and narrow paths to small rustic outbuildings haphazardly scattered back against the trees. A few dim bulbs on poles showed the paths and the driveway, and made clear and startling the big white, templelike building that dominated the center of the broad lawns.
They called it a shrine and it looked like a pillared temple, with softly lighted windows and a wide flag-stone terrace all around. Our headlights picked out several figures on the terrace clad in the flowing white togas.
Paige turned the big car into a narrow side drive that skirted the trees and the small outbuildings. We stopped before one of the small buildings.
“You will live here, Brother,” Paige said, getting out.
Not so bad. It was a snug little cabin built of peeled cedar logs, with screened windows, flower beds and a trellised vine.
“Is Father Orion here?” I wanted to know doubtfully.
“Father Orion,” Paige said as he entered the cabin and switched on a light, “is now supervising the Evening Circle of Felicity. After you change into your robe and sandals, I’ll take you into the Circle.”
“Robe?” says I, eyeing the white garment Paige took from a hook and tossed on a narrow bed.
“I’ll change also and come back for you,” Paige nodded.
“B-but I’m dressed,” I protested weakly.
Paige was stern. “Father Orion only sees those who put aside all things of the world. I’ll return in fifteen minutes, Brother.”
Chapter III
The Woman in Black
He drove off and under my breath I damned Lew Ryster again. Mike Harris in one of those Roman nightgowns! If someone I knew ever caught me out in that harness I’d never live it down.
But if I balked, I’d probably get no closer to Father Orion.
Outside in the night something was softly throbbing, throbbing.
It sounded like a drum, muted, beating a lazy irregular rhythm. I switched off the light, opened the door and traced the sound to the looming mass of the Shrine off there across the lawns.
More hocus-pocus. It stopped as I buckled on the sandals and stood up in the white toga, feeling like a fool.
They’d saved the day with a roomy inside pocket where I could carry the billfold. Brophy, back in Chicago, would have had a spasm if he’d known the company his eight grand was keeping now.
I lighted a cigarette and was wondering what gives next when Paige returned. He had changed into a white toga. One look and he snatched my cigarette and stamped it under a sandaled foot.
“Tobacco would desecrate the Shrine, Brother,” he reproved. “This way.”
So I smothered an impulse to slug Brother Paige and slap-slapped after him in the leather sandals.
Dew got on my feet. The cold night air blew up my bare legs under the toga. We looked like a couple of lost ghosts as we moved toward the Shrine, crossed the terrace and passed inside.
The lazy drumming had started again, and the soft rhythm was there at the other end of a big crowded patio which we had entered.
Shaded wall lamps filled the place with soft light. Men and women were moving about and sitting on couches, backless chairs and benches. Long ones, short ones, fat and thin, young and old, talking, laughing. All wore white togas and robes. Incense curled from small braziers toward the open sky and stars overhead.