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.
Gutman leaned forward and wagged a fat finger at the pistols on the table beside Spade’s legs.
“There’s ample evidence of his guilt, sir. Both men were shot with those guns. It’s a very simple matter for the police department experts to determine that the bullets that killed the men were fired from those guns. You know that — you’ve mentioned it yourself. And that, it seems to me, is ample proof of his guilt.”
“Maybe,” Spade agreed, “but the thing’s more complicated than that, and I’ve got to know what happened so I can be sure that the parts that won’t fit in are covered up.”
Cairo’s eyes were round and hot.
“Apparently you’ve forgotten that you assured us it would be a very simple affair, Mr. Spade,” he said. He turned his excited dark face to Gutman. “You see! I advised you not to do this. I don’t think—”
“It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference what either of you think,” Spade said bluntly. “It’s too late for that now, and you’re in too deep. Why did he kill Thursby?”
Gutman interlaced his fingers over his belly and rocked his chair. His voice, like his smile, was frankly rueful.
“You are an uncommonly difficult person to get the best of,” he said. “I begin to think that we made a mistake, sir, in not letting you alone from the very first. By Gad, I do!”
Spade moved his cigarette carelessly. “You haven’t done so bad. You’re staying out of jail and you’re getting the falcon. What do you mean?” He put his cigarette into a corner of his mouth and said around it, “Anyhow, you know where you stand now. Why did he kill Thursby?”
Gutman stopped rocking his chair. “Thursby was a notorious gunman, and Miss O’Shaughnessy’s ally. We knew that removing him in just that manner would make her stop and think that perhaps she would do better to patch up her differences with us, besides leaving her without so violent a protector. You see, sir, I am being candid with you.”
“Yes. Keep it up. You didn’t think he might have the falcon?”
Gutman shook his head so that his round cheeks wabbled.
“We didn’t think that for a minute,” he replied. He smiled benevolently. “We had the advantage of knowing Miss O’Shaughnessy far too well for that and, while we didn’t then know that she had left the falcon with Captain Jacobi in Hongkong, to be brought over on the Paloma while they took a faster boat, still we didn’t think for a minute that, if only one of them knew where it was, Thursby was the one.”
Spade nodded thoughtfully and asked:
“You didn’t try to make a deal with him before you gave him the works?”
“Yes, sir, certainly we did. I talked to him myself that night. Wilmer had located him two days before, and had been trying to follow him to wherever he was meeting Miss O’Shaughnessy, but Thursby was too crafty for that, even if he didn’t know he was being followed. So that night Wilmer went to his hotel, learned he wasn’t in, and waited outside for him. I suppose Thursby returned immediately after killing your partner. Be that as it may, Wilmer brought him to see me. We could do nothing with him: he was quite determinedly loyal to Miss O’Shaughnessy. Well, sir, Wilmer followed him back to his hotel and did what he did.”
Spade thought for a moment. “That sounds all right. Now Jacobi.”
Gutman looked with grave eyes at Spade and said: “Captain Jacobi’s death was entirely Miss O’Shaughnessy’s fault.”
The girl gasped, “Oh!” and put a hand to her mouth.
Spade’s voice was heavy and even. “Never mind that now. How did it happen?”
After a shrewd look at Spade, Gutman smiled.
“Just as you say, sir,” he said. “Well, Cairo, as you now know, got in touch with me — or rather I sent for him — after he left police headquarters the night — the morning — he was up here. We recognized the mutual advantage of pooling forces at that time.” He directed his smile at the Levantine. “Mr. Cairo is a man of nice judgment. The Paloma was his thought. He saw the notice of its arrival in the papers, and remembered that in Hongkong he had heard that Miss O’Shaughnessy and Jacobi had been seen together. That was when he was trying to find her there, and he thought at first that she had left on the Paloma, though later he learned that she hadn’t. Well, sir, when he saw that in the paper, he guessed just what had happened: she had given the bird to Jacobi to bring here for her. Jacobi did not know what it was, of course. Miss O’Shaughnessy is too discreet for that.”
He beamed at the girl, rocked his chair twice, and went on: “Mr. Cairo and Wilmer and I went to call on Captain Jacobi, and were fortunate enough to arrive before Miss O’Shaughnessy had left. In many ways it was a difficult interview, but finally by midnight, we had persuaded Miss O’Shaughnessy to come to terms, or so we thought. We then left the boat and set out for my hotel, where we were to pay Miss O’Shaughnessy and receive the bird. Well, sir, we, mere men, should have known better than to suppose we were capable of coping with her. En route, she and Captain Jacobi and the falcon slipped completely through our fingers.” He laughed merrily. “By Gad, sir, it was neatly done.”
Spade looked at the girl. Her eyes, large and dark with pleading, met his. He asked Gutman:
“You touched off the boat before you left?”
“Not intentionally, no, sir,” the fat man replied, “though I dare say we — or Wilmer at least — were responsible for the fire. He was out trying to find the falcon while the rest of us were talking in the cabin, and he may have been careless with matches.”
“That’s fine,” Spade said. “If any slip-up makes it necessary for us to try him for Jacobi’s murder we can also hang an arson charge on him. All right. Now about the shooting?”
“Well, sir, we dashed around town all day trying to find them, and we found them late this afternoon. We weren’t sure at first that we had found them. All we were sure of was that we had found Miss O’Shaughnessy’s apartment, on California Street. But when we listened at the door we heard them moving inside, so we were pretty confident we had them, and rang the bell. When she asked us who we were and we told her, we heard a window going up.
“We knew what that meant, of course, so Wilmer hurried downstairs as fast as he could and around to the back of the building to cover the fire escape. And when he turned into the alley he ran right plumb smack into Jacobi running away with the falcon under his arm. That was a difficult situation to handle, but Wilmer did every bit as well as he could. He shot Jacobi, more than once, but Jacobi was too tough to either fall down or drop the falcon, and he was too close for Wilmer to keep out of his way. He knocked Wilmer down and ran. And this was in broad daylight, you understand, in the afternoon. And when Wilmer got up he could see a policeman coming up from the block below. So he had to give it up. He dodged into the open back door of the building next to the Coronet, into the street, and then in to join us, and very fortunate he was to make it safely.
“Well, sir, there we were, stumped again. Miss O’Shaughnessy had opened the door for Cairo and me after she had seen Jacobi safely out the window, and she—” He smiled at a memory. “We persuaded — that is the word, sir — her to tell us that she had told Jacobi to take the falcon to you. It looked very unlikely that he’d live to get there, even if he wasn’t picked up by the police on his way, but that was the only chance we had, sir. And so, once more, we persuaded Miss O’Shaughnessy to give us a little assistance. We had her phone you in an attempt to draw you away from your office before Jacobi got there, and we sent Wilmer after him. Unfortunately, it had taken us too long to decide, and too long to persuade Miss O’Shaughnessy to—”