Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

“Fast work,” I grinned, breathing easier and wanting to slap that big red-faced dick’s back and shake his hand.

“We give you a chance to let us in on it,” Jake Dennis blared indignantly. “And did you hand Sweet an’ me a tumble when you stepped off that plane tonight?”

“I wondered how the hell you happened to be there,” I admitted.

“So we hadda tail you up here in the mountains,” Jake Dennis snorted. “We had to hang around down there in the bushes slapping at the bugs and wondering what the hell all this was about! All because of a dirty—”

“Hold it, Jake!” Larry Sweet broke in. “Who are these two, Harris?”

“Miss Meehan, from my agency,” I said. “And Joe Clark, who was kidnapped and tortured in there. I’ve got Eddy Voss, an ex-con, locked up, and there’s a dead woman who seems to have taken poison, and the old he-goat of the whole outfit was out on a marijuana nod when we left. The guard at the gate there is shot through the knee. I left another fellow tied up. Miss Meehan shot a couple more times. I don’t know whether she knocked anyone over or not. It was a close squeak.”

“It sounds like a lunatic party!” Larry Sweet exclaimed.

“It was,” I said. “And you better get help fast.”

“There’s a car coming,” Jake Dennis said, looking down the road.

“Paige!” says I. “I’ll bet it’s John Paige, Father Orion’s secretary! We want him bad! He’s in the center of all this!”

“We’ll get him,” Dennis snapped. “Get back off the road!”

Headlights were flashing beyond the next turn as we faded into the underbrush. The car came into view fast and slowed for the gates.

Jake Dennis waited until it was almost to us and leaped out into the road waving his gun. The car surged ahead. Dennis was expecting it. Give that big cop credit; he knew what to do. He swung on the runningboard with an arm hooked through the front window, and his bellow reached us.

“You’re under arrest! Stop this car!”

A gun crashed — and it wasn’t Jake’s. Then his gun blasted twice before he fell off the running board. He stumbled, sprawled, staggered up a moment later as the big Caddy that had brought me from the airport swerved and hit one of the stone gate posts.

Jake Dennis was running unsteadily toward it when we caught up with him.

“He flashed a gun on me! I hope I killed the dirty rat!” Dennis cried hoarsely. “Shot me in the arm!”

Well, he hadn’t killed the man. The smash hadn’t either. John Paige was feebly trying to get out from behind the wheel when we pulled him out.

His face was gashed and bleeding, he had a bullet hole through his chest and a line of pink froth was on his lips as he choked and breathed hard.

“What’s this?” Larry Sweet said, jerking open the back door.

He dragged out a brown-haired young woman whose head lolled limply and whose eyes were wide and sightless.

“Dead!” Larry Sweet said in a flat voice. “It must have broken her neck.” He laid her on the ground and turned to Paige. “Who is she?”

“My wife,” Paige said. His eyes had been rolling at me with a wild, questioning stare. He hesitated before making the admission, and then broke into a fit of coughing that brought more of the bloody froth to his lips.

Then he saw Joe Clark, unshaven, gaunt and menacing, and he cowered against the ground.

“His wife,” I said. “And there’s a girl in there who’s ready to marry him. And she’s lousy with money. What would he do with a wife who stood in his way of getting his hands on that money?”

I was thinking aloud and stooping over the dead girl on the ground at the same time.

“Sweet,” I said, “did you see this?”

Larry Sweet’s handsome face went hard and he cursed under his breath as he followed my pointing finger. She had been a pretty girl with fair delicate skin and a slender neck. The ugly, purple fingerprints on her neck might have been painted there.

“Killed her — murdered her!” Sweet said in a hard voice.

“Murdered her,” I said, “like he murdered the Farnson girl. Both women were in his way. They would have queered his marriage to a couple of million dollars. Eh, Paige? You wanted the money bad, didn’t you? Worse than you wanted my eight grand?”

He coughed, breathing with harsh rattles. “Damn you — who are you?” he gasped.

“A cop,” I said. “So is the young lady here who came with Nancy Cudahy. See this fellow you turned over to old Orion? Eddy Voss is locked up. It’s all over. I doubt if you’ll last until we get you to a doctor. Why did you think you had to kill the Farnson girl?”

I thought he was dying and it didn’t matter much. He thought the same. Keeping his mouth shut wouldn’t help now.

“She knew I was married,” he got out with an effort. “She’d known my wife at one of the studios where they worked together. She had me meet her and told me she’d tell Nancy about the wife if I didn’t make Nancy forget Orion and me and start back East. Had to get rid of her. She’d have ruined everything.”

“Who runs this joint — Orion or you?”

“Me,” Paige mumbled. “Good business. They eat it up. He believes in himself and they believe in him. Never was anything like it. He didn’t have a dime when I found him. I made him famous. They do anything for him, tell anything...”

“Hell, what a story this’ll make in the papers tomorrow!” Jake Dennis said prayerfully. “Watch everything, Larry, while I get the car.” His voice came back to us as he started at a run down the road. “What a story — what a story...”

Lew Ryster thought so the next morning, in the Blaine Agency office in Hollywood, after he heard all the details and read the papers.

“But I told you,” Lew yelped, almost purple-faced, “that those two pirates would steal the shirt off your back when it came to getting credit for a case.” Lew slapped the papers on his desk. “Look at ’em! Read it and weep. You have to be a good guesser to find anything about us in these papers.”

Little Trixie Meehan, pale and pretty, sweet and soft in a white summer dress and hat, said: “Nuts, Lew. Mike would have cashed in if those two cops hadn’t appeared. Let them have the glory. This man Farnson has promised Mike the two thousand reward, hasn’t he?”

“All right,” Lew surrendered. “Mike takes a thousand, you get a thousand, and I hold the bag. There’s just one thing that’ll make me happy. What is this Great Truth that was being taught to everyone up there?”

“I never found out,” I confessed; and suddenly I grinned as I stood up and reached for my hat. “But I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Never give a sucker an even break. And when we split Farnson’s reward money, I’ll keep you in mind. Lew.”

“Swell, Mike — that’s decent of you. I didn’t expect it.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’ve had a shot of the Great Truth myself since you busted up my trip to New York. I’ll keep you in mind while this shoulder is healing and I’m spending the reward money.”

I stopped at the door and grinned at Lew.

“So long, Sucker,” I said.

It was not at all uncommon for pulp writers to be prolific, considering how little they were paid for their work, but some went to extremes, and Prentice Winchell (1895–1976), whose best-known pseudonym was Stewart Sterling, was at the front of that group. In addition to hundreds (about four hundred seems the best estimate, as there may have been unrecorded pseudonyms) of short stories, he also wrote and produced more than five hundred radio programs, as well as journalism and numerous literary efforts for film and television. Like many other pulp writers, he created detective characters with unusual occupations, most notably a tough fire marshal (Ben Pedley, who appeared in forty stories and nine novels), a hotel dick (Gil Vine, the protagonist in eight novels), and a department store detective (Don Cadee, in nine novels, all written under the Spencer Dean pseudonym). For Black Mask, he created an innovative series of nine novelettes headlined as “Special Squad” stories, covering the activities of the Bomb and Forgery Squad, the Harbor Patrol, the Pickpocket and Confidence Bureau, the Air Police, the Pawnshop Detail, Emergency, Safe-and-Loft, and, twice, Homicide. In the present story, Sergeant Helen Dixon, generally a member of the Policewoman’s Bureau, is temporarily assigned to the Homicide Division. Although there were few women cops or private eyes in Black Mask, Dixon stood out for, well, not standing out. She was ordinary-looking, a useful characteristic for a policewoman.