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.
“Maybe,” he said, “but I’ll have to know what it’s all about.”
She went down on her knees at his knees. She held her face up to him. Her face was wan, taut, and fearful over tight-clasped hands.
“I haven’t lived a good life,” she cried. “I’m bad — worse than you could know — but I’m not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I’m not all bad, don’t you? You can see that, can’t you? Then can’t you trust me a little? I’m so alone and afraid, and I’ve got nobody to help me if you won’t help me. I know I’ve no right to ask you to trust me if I won’t trust you. I do trust you, but I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you now. Later I will, when I can. I’m afraid, Mr. Spade. I’m afraid of trusting you. I don’t mean that. I do trust you, but — but I trusted Floyd, and — I’ve nobody else, nobody else, Mr. Spade. You can save me. You’ve said you can save me. If I hadn’t believed you could save me I would have run away today instead of sending for you. If I thought anybody else could save me would I be down on my knees to you? I know this isn’t fair of me. But be generous, Mr. Spade. Don’t ask me to be fair. You’re strong, you’re resourceful, you’re brave. You can spare me some of that strength and resourcefulness and courage, surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. Help me because I need help so badly, and because if you don’t where will I find anyone who can, however willing? Help me. I’ve no right to ask you to help me blindly, but I do ask you. Be generous, Mr. Spade. You can save me. You can. Won’t you?”
Spade, who had held his breath throughout much of this speech, now emptied his lungs with a long sighing exhalation between pursed lips and said: “You won’t need much of anybody’s help. You’re good. You’re very good. It’s chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throaty sob you get into your voice when you say things like, ‘Be generous, Mr. Spade.’ ”
She jumped up on her feet. Her face crimsoned painfully, but she held her head erect and she looked Spade straight in the eyes.
“I deserve that,” she said. “I deserve it, but... oh!... I did want your help so much, and I do want it so much, and the lie was in the way I said it, Mr. Spade, and hardly at all in what I said.” She turned away from him, no longer holding herself erect. “It’s my own fault that you can’t believe me now.”
Spade’s face reddened and he looked down at the floor, muttering: “Now you are dangerous.”
Brigid O’Shaughnessy went to the table and got his hat. She came back and stood in front of him holding the hat, not offering it to him, but holding it for him to take if he wished. Her face was white and thin.
Spade looked at his hat and asked:
“What happened last night?”
“Floyd came to the hotel at nine o’clock, and we went out for a walk. I suggested that, so Mr. Archer could see him. We stopped at a restaurant in Geary Street, I think it was, for supper and to dance, and got back to the hotel at about half past twelve. Floyd left me at the door, and I stood inside and watched Mr. Archer follow him down the street, on the other side.”
“Down? You mean toward Market Street?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what they’d be doing in the neighborhood of Bush and Stockton, where Archer was shot?”
“Isn’t that near where Floyd lived?”
“No. It would be a dozen blocks out of his way if he was going from your hotel to his. Well, what did you do after they left?”
“I went to bed. And this morning when I went out for breakfast I saw the headlines in the paper and read about both of them being killed. Then I went up to Union Square, where I had seen automobiles for hire, and got one and went to my hotel for my luggage. After I found my room had been searched yesterday I knew I would have to move, and I had found this place yesterday afternoon. So I came up here and then phoned your office.”
“Your room at the St. Mark was searched?” he asked.
“Yes, while I was in your office.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“You mean by that that I’m not to question you about it?”
She nodded timidly.
He frowned.
She moved his hat a little in her hands.
He laughed impatiently and said:
“Stop waving my hat in my face. Haven’t I promised to do what I can?”
She smiled contritely, returned the hat to the table, and sat beside him on the settee again.
He said: “As for trusting you blindly, I’ve got nothing against that except that I won’t be able to do much if I haven’t some idea of what’s going on. For instance, I’ve got to know something about your Floyd Thursby.”
“I met him in the Orient.” She spoke slowly, looking down at a pointed finger that traced 8’s on the seat of the settee between them. “We came here together from Hongkong, last week. He was — he had promised to help me. He took advantage of my helplessness and dependence on him to... to betray me.”
“Betray you how?”
She shook her head and said nothing.
Spade frowned impatiently and asked:
“Why did you want him shadowed?”
“I wanted to know how far he had gone. He wouldn’t even tell me where he was staying. I wanted to find out what he was doing, who he was meeting, things like that.”
“Did he kill Archer?”
She looked up at him, surprised.
“Yes, certainly,” she said.
“He had a Lüger in a shoulder-holster. Archer wasn’t shot with a Lüger.”
“He had a revolver in his overcoat pocket,” she said.
“You saw it?”
“Oh, I’ve seen it often. I know he always carried it there. I didn’t see it last night, but I know he never wore an overcoat without it.”
“Why all the guns?”
“He lived by them. There was a story in Hongkong that he had come out there, to the Orient, as bodyguard to a gambler who had had to leave the States, and that the gambler had since disappeared. They said Floyd knew about his disappearance. I don’t know. I do know that he always went heavily armed, and that he never went to sleep without covering the floor around his bed with crumpled newspapers, so nobody could come silently into his room.”
“You picked a nice sort of playmate.”
“Only that sort could have helped me,” she said simply, “if he had been loyal.”
“Yes, if.” Spade pinched his lower lip between finger and thumb and looked gloomily at her. The vertical creases over his nose deepened, drawing his brows together. “How bad a hole are you actually in?”
“As bad,” she said, “as could be.”
“Physical danger?”
“I’m not heroic. I don’t think there’s anything worse than death.”
“Then it’s that?”
“It’s that as surely as we’re sitting here” — she shivered — “unless you help me.”
He took his fingers away from his mouth and ran them through his hair.
“I’m not Christ,” he said irritably. “I can’t work miracles out of thin air.” He looked at his watch. “The day’s going and you’ve given me nothing to work with. Who killed Thursby?”
She put a crumpled handkerchief to her mouth and said, “I don’t know,” through it.
“Your enemies or his?”
“I don’t know. His, I hope, but I’m afraid — I don’t know.”
“How was he supposed to be helping you? Why did you bring him here from Hongkong?”
She looked at him with frightened eyes and shook her head in silence. Her face was haggard and pitifully stubborn.
Spade stood up, thrust his hands into his jacket pockets, and scowled down at her.
“This is hopeless,” he said savagely. “I can’t do anything for you. I don’t know what you want done. I don’t even know if you know what you want.”