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.
“A customer?”
“I guess so. You’ll want to see her anyway; she’s a knockout.”
“Shoo her in, darling,” said Spade. “Shoo her in.”
Effie Perine opened the door again, following it back into the outer office, standing with a hand on the knob while saying:
“Will you come in, Miss Wonderly?”
A voice said, “Thank you,” so softly that only the purest articulation made the words audible, and a young woman came through the doorway. She advanced slowly, with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing.
She was tall. She was pliantly slender. Her erect, high-breasted body, her long legs, her narrow hands and feet, had nowhere any angularity. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.
Spade rose, bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken armchair beside his desk. He was quite six feet tall. The steep, rounded slope of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical, no broader than it was thick, and kept his freshly pressed gray coat from fitting very well.
Miss Wonderly murmured, “Thank you,” softly as before, and sat down on the edge of the chair’s wooden seat.
Spade sank into his swivel-chair, made a quarter turn to face her, and smiled politely. He smiled without separating his lips. All the V’s in his face grew longer.
The tappity-tap-tap and the thin bell and muffled whir of Effie Perine’s typewriting came through the closed door. Somewhere in a neighboring office a power-driven machine vibrated dully. On Spade’s desk a limp cigarette smoldered in a brass tray filled with the remains of limp cigarettes. Ragged gray flakes of cigarette ash dotted the yellow top of the desk and the green blotter and the papers that were there. A buff-curtained window, eight or ten inches open, let in from the court a current of air faintly scented with ammonia. The ashes on the desk twitched and crawled in the current.
Miss Wonderly watched the twitching and crawling gray flakes uneasily. She sat stiffly on the very edge of her chair, her feet flat on the floor, as if she were about to rise. Her hands in dark gloves clasped a flat, dark handbag in her lap.
Spade rocked back in his chair and asked:
“Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?”
She caught her breath and looked at him. She swallowed and said hurriedly: “Could you—? I thought... I... that is—” Then she tortured her lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing. Only her dark eyes spoke now, pleading.
Spade nodded and smiled as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if nothing really serious were involved. The same assurance was in his voice when he spoke.
“Suppose you tell me all about it, and then we’ll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can, as near the beginning.”
“That was in New York,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I don’t know where she met him. I mean I don’t know where in New York. She’s five years younger than I, only seventeen, and we didn’t have the same friends. I don’t suppose we were ever as close as sisters should be. Mama and Papa are in Europe. It would kill them. I’ve got to get her back before they come home.”
“Yes.”
“They’re returning the first of the month.”
Spade’s eyes brightened. “Then we’ve two whole weeks,” he said.
“I didn’t know what she had done until her letter came. I was frantic.” Her lips trembled. Her hands mashed the dark handbag in her lap. “The fear that she had done something like this kept me from going to the police, and the fear that something had happened to her kept urging me to go. There wasn’t anyone I could go to for advice. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do?”
“Nothing, of course,” Spade said amiably, “but then her letter came?”
“Yes, and I sent her a telegram asking her to come home. I sent it to General Delivery here. That was the only address she had given me. I waited a week, but no answer came, not a word from her. And Mama and Papa’s return was drawing nearer and nearer. So I came to San Francisco to get her. I wrote her I was coming. I shouldn’t have done that, should I?”
“Maybe not. It’s not always easy to know what to do. Then you haven’t found her?”
“I haven’t found her. I wrote her that I would go to the St. Mark, and I begged her to come and let me talk to her even if she didn’t intend going home with me. But she didn’t come. I waited there three days, and Corinne didn’t come, didn’t even send me a message.”
Spade nodded his blond Satan’s head slowly, frowning sympathetically, his lips tightened together.
“It was horrible,” she said, trying to smile. “I couldn’t sit there like that and wait and wait, not knowing what had happened to her, what might be happening to her.” She stopped trying to smile, and shuddered. “The only address I had was General Delivery. I wrote her another letter, and yesterday afternoon I went to the Post Office. I stayed there until dark, but I didn’t see her. I went there again this morning, and still didn’t see Corinne, but I saw Floyd Thursby.”
Spade nodded again, but his frown had vanished. In its place was a look of sharp attentiveness.
“He wouldn’t tell me where Corinne is,” she went on, hopelessly. “He wouldn’t tell me anything, except that she is well and happy. But how can I believe him? That is what he would tell me anyhow, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Spade agreed, “but it might be true.”
“I hope it is. I do hope it is,” she exclaimed. “But I can’t go back home like this, without having seen her, without even having talked to her on the phone. He wouldn’t take me to her. He said she didn’t want to see me. I can’t believe that. He promised to tell her he had seen me, and to bring her to see me if she would come — this evening at the hotel. He said he knew she wouldn’t. He promised to come himself if she wouldn’t. He—”
She broke off with a startled hand to her mouth as the office door opened.
The man who had opened the door came in a step, said, “Oh, excuse me,” hastily took his brown hat from his head, and backed out.
“It’s all right, Miles,” Spade told him. “Come in. Miss Wonderly, this is Mr. Archer, my partner.”
Miles Archer came into the office again, shutting the door behind him, ducking his head and smiling at Miss Wonderly, making a vaguely polite gesture with the hat in his hand.
He was of medium height, solidly built, wide in the shoulders, thick in the neck, with a jovial, heavy-jawed red face and some gray in his close-trimmed hair. He was apparently as many years past forty as Spade was past thirty.
Spade said:
“Miss Wonderly’s sister ran away from New York with a fellow named Floyd Thursby. They’re here. Miss Wonderly has seen Thursby, and has a date with him tonight. Maybe he’ll bring her sister with him. The chances are he won’t. Miss Wonderly wants us to help her find her sister and get her away from him and back home.” He looked at Miss Wonderly. “Right?”
“Yes,” she replied indistinctly.
The embarrassment that had gradually been driven away by Spade’s ingratiating smiles and nods and assurances was pinkening her face again. She looked at the bag in her lap and picked nervously at it with a gloved finger.
Spade winked solemnly at his partner.
Miles Archer came forward to stand at a corner of the desk. While the girl looked at her bag he looked at her. His little brown eyes ran their bold, appraising gaze from her lowered face to her feet and up to her face again. Then he looked at Spade and made a silent whistling mouth of appreciation.