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.
Spade said, “Yes,” and caught her as she swayed.
Her body arched back over his arm, and her head dropped straight back, so that her short fair hair hung down from her scalp and her slender throat was a firm curve from chin to chest.
Spade slid his supporting arm higher up her back and bent to get his other arm under her knees, but she stirred, resisting, and between parted lips that barely moved blurred words came: “No! Ma’e me wal’!”
Spade made her walk. He kicked the door shut and he walked her up and down the green-carpeted room, from wall to wall. One of his arms around her small body — that hand under her armpit — his other hand gripping her other arm, held her erect when she stumbled, checked her swaying, kept urging her forward, but made her tottering legs bear all of her weight they could bear.
They walked across and across the floor, the girl faltering, with incoordinate steps; Spade surely, on the balls of his feet, with balance unaffected by her staggering. Her face was chalk-white and eyeless; his sullen, with eyes hardened to watch everywhere at once.
He talked to her, monotonously:
“That’s the stuff. Left, right, left, right. That’s the stuff. One, two, three, four, now we turn.” He shook her as they turned from the wall. “Now back again. One, two, three, four. Hold your head up. That’s the stuff. Good girl. Left, right, left, right. Now we turn again.” He shook her again. “Walk, walk, walk, walk. One, two, three, four. That’s the girl. Now we go around.” He shook her, more roughly, and increased their pace. “That’s the trick. Left, right, left, right. Speed it up. We’re in a hurry. One, two, three...”
She shuddered, and swallowed audibly. Spade began to chafe her arm and side, and he bent his mouth nearer her ear.
“That’s fine. You’re doing fine. One, two, three, four. Faster, faster, faster, faster. That’s it. Step, step, step, step. Pick them up and lay them down. That’s the stuff. What’d they do, dope you? The same stuff they gave me?”
Her eyelids twitched up then for an instant over dulled golden-brown eyes, and she managed to say all of, “Yes,” except the final consonant.
They walked the floor, the girl almost trotting now to keep up with Spade, Spade slapping and kneading her flesh through yellow silk with both hands, talking and talking while his eyes remained hard and aloof and watchful.
“Left, right, left, right, left, right, turn. That’s the girl. One, two, three, four. Keep the chin up. That’s the stuff...”
Her lids lifted again, a bare fraction of an inch, and under them her eyes moved dully from side to side.
“That’s fine,” he said, crisply, dropping his monotone. “Keep them open! Open them wide, wide!” He shook her.
She moaned in protest, but her lids went further up, though her eyes still were without inner light.
He raised his hand and slapped her cheek half a dozen times in quick succession.
She moaned again and tried to break away from him. His arm held her, swept her along beside him from wall to wall.
“Keep walking,” he ordered in a harsh voice, and then: “Who are you?”
Her, “Rhea Gutman,” was thick, but intelligible.
“The daughter?”
“Yes.” Now she was no farther from the final consonant than sh.
“Where’s Brigid?”
She twisted convulsively around in his arms and caught at one of his hands with both of hers.
He pulled his hand away quickly and looked at it. Across its back was a thin red scratch, an inch and a half or more in length.
“What the hell?” he growled, and examined her hands. Her left hand was empty. In her right hand, when he opened it, lay a three-inch jade-headed steel bouquet pin. “What the hell?” he growled again, and held the pin up in front of her eyes.
When she saw the pin she whimpered and opened her dressing gown. She pushed aside the cream-colored pajama coat under it, and showed him her body below her left breast — white flesh crisscrossed with thin red lines, dotted with tiny red dots, where the pin had scratched and punctured it.
“To keep me awake... to walk... till you came... She said you’d come... were so long coming!” She swayed.
Spade tightened his arm around her and said:
“Walk!”
She fought against the arm, squirming around to face him again.
“No... tell you... sleep... you go to her...”
“Brigid?” he demanded.
“Yes... took her... Burlingame... 26 Ancho... hurry... too late.”
Her head fell over on her shoulder.
Spade pushed her head up, roughly.
“Who took her? Your father?”
“Yes... Wilmer... Cairo...” She writhed, and her eyelids twitched but did not open. “...kill her...”
Her head fell over again, and again he pushed it up.
“Who shot Jacobi?”
She did not seem to hear the question. She tried pitifully to hold her head up, to open her eyes. She mumbled: “Go... she...”
He shook her brutally.
“Stay awake till the doctor comes.”
Fear opened her eyes and pushed for a moment the cloudiness from her face.
“No, no,” she cried thickly, “Father... kill me... swear you won’t... he’d know... I did... for her... promise you won’t... sleep... all right... morning.”
He shook her again.
“You’re sure you can sleep it off all right?”
“Ye’.” Her head fell down.
“Where’s your bed?”
She tried to raise a hand, but the effort had become too much for her before the hand pointed at anything except the floor. With a sigh of a tired child she let her whole body relax and crumple.
Spade caught her up in his arms, scooped her up as she sank, and, holding her easily against his chest, went to the nearest of the three doors.
He turned the knob far enough to release the catch, pushed the door open with his foot, and went into a passageway that ran past an open bathroom door to a bedroom. He looked into the bathroom, saw it was empty, and carried the girl into the bedroom. Nobody was there, but the clothing that was visible, and things on the chiffonier, said it was a man’s room.
Spade carried the girl back to the green-carpeted room and tried the opposite door. Through it he passed into another passageway, past another empty bathroom, and into a bedroom that was feminine in its accessories.
He turned back the bedclothes and laid the girl on the bed, removed her slippers, raised her a little to slide the yellow dressing gown off, fixed a pillow under her head, and put the covers up over her.
Then he opened the room’s two windows and stood with his back to them, staring at the sleeping girl. Her breathing was heavy but not troubled. He frowned and looked around, working his lips together. Twilight was dimming the room. He stood there in the weakening light for perhaps five minutes. Finally he shook his thick sloping shoulders impatiently and went out, leaving the outer door unlocked.
Spade went to the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company’s Powell Street station and called Davenport 2020: “Emergency Hospital, please... Hello, there’s a girl in suite 12-C at the Alexandria Hotel who has been drugged... Yes, you’d better send somebody to take a look at her... Yes, this is Mr. Hooper of the Alexandria.”
He put the receiver on its prong and laughed.
He called another number and said:
“Hello, Frank. This is Sam Spade... Can you let me have a car to go down the peninsula right away?... Just a couple of hours. And give me a driver that will keep his mouth shut, will you?... Right. Have him pick me up at John’s, Ellis Street, as soon as he can make it.”