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.
Having examined these articles carefully — he even opened the back of the watchcase to see that nothing was concealed inside — Spade leaned over and took the unconscious man’s wrist between finger and thumb, feeling his pulse. Then he put the wrist down, leaned back in his chair, and rolled and lighted another cigarette.
His face while he smoked was, except for occasional slight and apparently aimless movements of his lower lip, so still and reflective that it seemed stupid. But when Cairo presently moaned and fluttered his eyelids Spade’s face became bland, and he put the beginning of a friendly smile into his eyes and mouth.
Joel Cairo awakened slowly. His eyes opened first, but a full minute passed before they fixed their gaze on any definite part of the ceiling. Then he shut his mouth and swallowed, exhaling heavily through his nose afterward. He drew in one foot and turned a hand over on his thigh. Then he raised his head from the chair-back, looked around the office in confusion, saw Spade, and sat up. He opened his mouth to speak, started, clapped a hand to his face where Spade’s fist had struck and where there was now a florid bruise.
He said through his teeth, painfully:
“I could have shot you, Mr. Spade.”
“You could have tried,” Spade conceded.
“I did not try.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you strike me after I was disarmed?”
“Sorry.” Spade grinned wolfishly, showing his jaw teeth. “But imagine my embarrassment when I found your five-thousand-dollar offer was just hooey.”
“You are mistaken, Mr. Spade. That was, and is, a genuine offer.”
“What the hell?” Spade’s surprise was genuine.
“I am prepared to pay five thousand dollars for the figure’s return.” Cairo took his hand away from his bruised face and sat up prim and business-like again. “You have it?”
“No.”
“If it is not here” — Cairo was very politely skeptical — “why should you have risked serious injury to prevent my searching for it?”
Spade flicked a finger at Cairo’s possessions on the desk. “You’ve got my apartment address. Been up there yet?”
“Yes, Mr. Spade. I am ready to pay five thousand dollars for the figure’s return, but surely it is natural enough that I should first try to spare the owner that expense if possible.”
“Who is he?”
Cairo shook his head. “I cannot reveal his name.”
“The fellow you sent the package to Constantinople to?” Spade asked carelessly. “Inkinopolis or something?”
Cairo hesitated, then said: “That package will reach him, yes.”
“What was in it?”
Cairo smiled. “You will have to forgive my not answering that.”
“Will I?” Spade leaned forward, smiling with tight lips. “I’ve got you by the neck, Cairo. You’ve walked in and tied yourself up, plenty strong enough to suit the police, with last night’s killings. Well, now you’ll have to play with me or else.”
Cairo’s smile was demure, but not in any way alarmed.
“I made somewhat extensive inquiries about you before taking any action,” he said, “and was assured that you were far too reasonable to allow other considerations to interfere with profitable business relations.”
Spade shrugged.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“I have offered you five thousand dollars for the—”
Spade thumped Cairo’s wallet with the backs of his fingers and said:
“There’s nothing like five thousand dollars here. You’re betting your eyes. You could come in and say, ‘I’ll pay you a million for a purple elephant.’ But what the hell would that mean?”
“I see, I see,” Cairo lisped thoughtfully, screwing up his eyes. “You wish some assurance of my sincerity.” He stroked his red lower lip with a finger-tip. “A retainer, would that serve?”
“It might.”
Cairo put his hand out toward his wallet, hesitated, withdrew the hand, and said:
“Will you take, say, a hundred dollars?”
Spade picked up the wallet and took out a hundred dollars. Then he frowned, said, “Better make it two hundred,” and did.
Cairo said nothing.
“Your first guess was that I had the bird,” Spade said in a crisp voice when he had put the two hundred dollars in his pocket and had returned the wallet to the desk-top. “There’s nothing in that. What’s your second?”
“That you know where it is, or, if not exactly that, that you know it is where you can get it.”
Spade neither denied nor affirmed this: he seemed hardly to have heard it. He asked: “What proof can you give me that your man is the owner?”
“Unfortunately, very little. There is this, though: nobody else can give you any authentic evidence of ownership at all. And if you know as much about the affair as I suppose — or I should not be here — you know that the means by which it was taken from him show that his right to it was more valid than anyone else’s — certainly more valid than Thursby’s.”
“What about his daughter?” Spade asked.
Excitement opened Cairo’s eyes and mouth, turned his face pink, made his voice shrill.
“He is not the owner!”
Spade said, “Oh,” mildly and ambiguously.
“Is he here, in San Francisco, now?” Cairo asked in a less shrill, but still excited voice.
Spade blinked his eyes sleepily and suggested:
“It might be better all around if we both put our cards on the table.”
Cairo recovered composure with a tiny jerk.
“I do not think that would be better,” he said. His voice was suave now. “If you know more than I, I shall profit by your knowledge, and so will you to the extent of five thousand dollars. If you do not, I have made a mistake in coming to you, and to do as you suggest would be simply to make that mistake worse.”
Spade nodded indifferently and waved his hand at the articles on the desk, saying: “There’s your stuff.” And then, when Cairo was returning the articles to his pockets: “It’s understood that you’re to pay my expenses while I’m getting this bird back for you, and five thousand dollars when it’s done.”
“Yes, Mr. Spade. That is, five thousand less whatever moneys have been advanced to you, five thousand in all.”
“Right. And it’s a legitimate proposition.” Spade’s face was solemn except for wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “You’re not hiring me to do any murders or burglaries, but simply to get it back if possible in an honest and lawful way.”
“If possible,” Cairo agreed. His face also was solemn except for the eyes. “And in any event with discretion.” He rose and picked up his hat. “I am at the Hotel Belvedere when you wish to communicate with me, room 635. I confidently expect the greatest mutual benefit from our association, Mr. Spade.” He hesitated. “May I have my pistol?”
“Sure. I’d forgotten it.”
Spade took the pistol out of his coat pocket and handed it to Cairo.
Cairo pointed the pistol at Spade’s chest.
“You will please keep your hands on the top of the desk,” he said earnestly. “I intend to search your offices.”
Spade said: “I’ll be damned.” Then he laughed in his throat and said: “All right. Go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
Chapter VI
The Undersized Shadow
For half an hour after Joel Cairo had gone Spade sat alone, still and frowning, in his office. Then he said aloud in the tone of one dismissing a problem, “Well, they’re paying for it,” and took a bottle of Manhattan cocktail and a paper drinking cup from a desk drawer. He filled the cup two-thirds full, drank, put the bottle back in the drawer, tossed the cup into the waste basket, put on his hat and overcoat, switched off the lights, and went down to the night-lit street.