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.
All that I knew now. But I didn’t know why the husband had bankrupted himself without a squawk and finally shot himself.
The woman could tell me. But could I talk to her in the privacy I had to have? Would she be alive that long? Would I be alive that long?
Sounds jittery, doesn’t it? Well, I had Brophy’s eight grand, and Father Orion’s madhouse all around, and a dead girl down the hill in Hollywood and a dead man in Philadelphia. I’d witnessed an automatic spitting bullets at Father Orion.
A little cool thought about the situation was enough to lift the hair on a sane man’s head.
So I tucked the contents of the purse under the mattress, switched the light off again and opened the door quietly.
The local disciples had been driving automobiles off the estate. When I stepped outside, the grounds seemed pretty well deserted. The Shrine was dark. Most of the overhead lights along the paths had been turned off. Here and there I could see the dim-lit windows of occupied cabins. The white shape that suddenly appeared at the corner of my cabin made me jump and swear violently.
“Iss forbidden,” I was sternly informed.
“Forbidden hell!” I said, mad because he’d surprised me out of a week’s growth. I needed growth at the moment. This toga-clad fellow was almost as big as the guard at the gate. “What’s forbidden?” I asked.
“Go out,” he said in an accent thick enough to slice.
“Yeah?” I said. “Who’s forbidden and who said so?”
“Everyone — you,” he told me. “Father Orion orders.”
“The hell with Father Orion,” I started to say — and didn’t. Such talk wouldn’t do me any good around here. “Where’s Paige?” I snapped.
“Don’ know.”
“Where’s Father Orion?”
“Don’ know. You sleep now, huh?”
“Yeah?” I said. “Oh, sure, I’ll sleep.”
He was big and the white toga made him look bigger. He was carrying a stick. I couldn’t see whether he had a gun.
“You go back,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
What else? His yell would have brought others. I might have ducked into the woods, reached the fence and gotten outside the guarded gate some way. But I didn’t think so. Back inside the dark cabin I began to fumble around as quietly as I could.
Ten minutes it took me, maybe a little more. When I finally looked past the edge of the window shade, the white toga was still out there a few feet from the front door. And for once I could have said a kind word for the sheet-wrapped brigade. They were easy to see at night.
The door hinge creaked. He was turning around when I started out, so I talked fast.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve got to see Father Orion.”
“Tomorrow,” he said stolidly.
“Tonight,” I said, walking up to him.
“What iss?” he asked suspiciously, looking down at my left hand.
“Money,” says I, holding it out. “I found it in the cabin. Look, Brother, look.”
He took the money instinctively. Maybe I’d have done the same. And I slugged him with the twisted pillow cases in my right hand and he went down with a funny grunting sound.
I forgot to say that the two pillow covers, one inside the other for strength, had a heavy doorknob knotted in the end. I’d used my knife point for a screwdriver to get the knob off. It was almost as good as a blackjack. For a moment I was afraid I’d caved his skull.
But I hadn’t. He was breathing heavily when I dragged him inside, turned the light on and began to tear sheets to tie and gag him. When I was through, he was through too, bound, gagged, helpless on the floor.
His eyes opened. He struggled, made sounds behind the gag and glared up at me.
I hefted the wooden club, which felt like it was loaded with lead in the end, and grinned at him.
“Brother,” I said, “it’s forbidden. You sleep now, huh — or I’ll bust you one with this bat you were carrying.”
He was silent and glaring when I turned the light off again and slipped out.
The estate was weird now in its quiet. Many of the cabins had gone dark. I wondered if more of the guards were creeping around. And I wondered where the woman in black was, and where Trixie Meehan was, and would it be safe to go to the cabin that Trixie was occupying with the Cudahy girl.
I decided to take a chance. Second cabin from the eating pavillion, Trixie had said.
The cabin was lighted. A small radio was playing softly inside. When I knocked cautiously the light went out, the music stopped.
“That’s Trixie, all right,” I thought. “And she doesn’t know anything or she’d have looked me up. So what now?”
And the door opened, a girl slipped out and threw her arms around me, crying softly: “Darling! Sweetheart!”
“Wrong number, sister,” I said, trying to untangle her from my neck.
She’d already discovered that. She uttered a little scream as she jumped back.
“I thought you were John!” she stammered.
Lightning does strike now and then. Miss Two Millions made a bull’s-eye with her confused comment — and I knew something I’d been wondering about. I thought fast before I spoke.
“Paige is busy just now,” I said. “He wanted me to tell you to... er... wait for him.”
“I didn’t think he could get back from town so quickly,” she babbled. “Who... who are you?”
“I’ve a message for Miss Meehan.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She... she didn’t come back from the Felicity Circle.”
“That’s funny,” I said calmly. “I wonder where she could be?”
Inside I wasn’t calm. I was suddenly afraid for Trixie. The night was too quiet, too ominously quiet. Paige had made a quick night trip into town for some reason — and Trixie was the first reason I thought of. Could she have been carried helplessly off the estate? And would Trixie’s body be found tomorrow somewhere down in the city, accidentally dead?
“Paige didn’t tell me where he was going,” I said. “Do you know any way I could get hold of him quickly?”
She said, “No,” and it sounded suspicious. So did the question that followed. “Who are you? I don’t believe I know you.”
“I’m Mike Harris,” I said. “Hasn’t John told you about me?”
“No.”
“He will, Miss Cudahy,” I promised, chuckling. “He’ll have a lot to say about me. I’ll look around for Miss Meehan. If she comes back, tell her I’m looking for her.”
I left before she could think to turn on the light. One look and she’d have me spotted as Brother Amnesia. And she wouldn’t be dumb enough not to smell a rat about my sudden familiarity with Paige’s secrets.
And so Paige was her sweetheart, her darling. Smooth, eh? Smoother than I had thought. Sweetheart and darling to millions! Who said there wasn’t any profit in being a crackpot?
But there wasn’t any profit in Mike Harris wandering around Father Orion’s zoo. Everything that happened was making the situation worse. And what about Trixie?
I was afraid — afraid for Trixie Meehan as I walked toward the big white shrine, the loaded club swinging in my hand and growing anger seething inside. Crackpots or no crackpots, if any harm came to Trixie I’d take the whole place apart.
The building was dark and seemed deserted. I skirted the terrace on the damp grass and made a circle of the shrine. Not a light, not a sound.
The patio entrance was open. I slipped inside and felt my way to the door through which Eddy Voss and Paige had carried the woman.
The door was unlocked. A dark hall was on the other side. Dark? It was an inky solid, with a tiled floor underfoot and rough plastered walls on either side. And the silence of a tomb.