Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

This distinguished collection of novels, novellas, and short fiction from Black Mask is the best book presentation of America’s most universally acclaimed pulp fiction magazine. That means many, many hours of exceptional entertainment. Enjoy!

— KEITH ALAN DEUTSCH

Roxbury, Vermont

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was born in Malden, Massachusetts, and studied law on his own; he never got a degree, but passed the bar exam in 1911, practicing law for about a decade. He made little money, so he started to write fiction, selling his first mystery to a pulp magazine in 1923. The rest, as many have said, is history. For the next decade, he published approximately 1.2 million words a year, the equivalent of a full-length novel every three weeks. It was not until 1933, however, that he wrote his first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, which introduced his incorruptible lawyer, Perry Mason, who went on to become the bestselling mystery character in American literature, with 300 million copies sold of eighty-two novels (though Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer outsold him on a per-book basis). While just about all mystery readers have read at least one Perry Mason novel, just as they’ve seen at least one episode of Perry Mason, the television series that starred Raymond Burr for nine hugely successful years, only the most dedicated fans have seen the six motion pictures in which Mason is far more sophisticated and smooth than in the early novels, which are fairly hard-boiled. Matinee idol Warren William played Mason in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), and The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936). Ricardo Cortez starred in The Case of the Black Cat (1936), and Donald Woods in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937).

“Come and Get It” stars Gardner’s major pulp character, Ed Jenkins; it ran in April 1927.

Ed Jenkins was warned by a crook he had once befriended to be on his guard against a “girl with a mole,” that she would lead him into deadly peril. This crook was shot the instant he left Ed’s apartment. Seemingly by accident, Ed soon meets the girl with the mole. She takes him to the mysterious head of a newly organized crime trust. Ed is given a “job” to do, threatened with death if he refuses and is offered as a reward certain blackmailing papers that have been held over the head of Helen Chadwick, the one girl in his whole career for whom he seriously cares. Ed is double-crossed. He strikes back. A murder is framed against him and an ambush set wherein he is to be shot with all the evidence of guilt upon him. He narrowly escapes, and now the duel to the death is on between the “Phantom Crook” and the icy-eyed leader of the crime ring. This series of three completed episodes is the most thrilling work the popular Mr. Gardner has yet produced.

I gazed into the black muzzle of the forty-four “Squint” Dugan was holding to my face, and secretly gave him credit for being much more clever than I had anticipated. I had hardly expected to be discovered in my hiding place, least of all by Squint Dugan.

I watched the slight trembling of his hands, and listened to the yammering of his threats. Dugan is of the type that does not kill in cold blood, but has to bolster his nerves with dope, arouse his rage by a recital of his wrongs. Gradually, bit by bit, he was working up his nerve to tighten his trigger finger.

“Damn yuh, Ed Jenkins! Don’t think I ain’t wise to the guy that hijacked that cargo. Fifty thousand berries it was, and you lifted it, slick and clean! Just because you worked one of those Phantom Crook stunts don’t mean that I ain’t hep to yuh. I got the goods on yuh, an’ I’m collectin’ right now. I ain’t alone in this thing, either; not by a hell of a lot, I ain’t. There’s men back of me who’ll see me through, back me to the limit...”

He blustered on, and I yawned.

That yawn laid the foundation for a little scheme I had in mind. Crooks of the Dugan type really have an inferiority complex. That’s what makes ’em bluster so much. They’re tryin’ to make the other man give in, tryin’ to sell themselves on the idea that they’re as good as the other bird.

“Rather chilly this evening,” I remarked casually, after that yawn had had a chance to soak in, and got up, calmly turned my back on the blustering crook and stirred up the fire with the poker. Apparently I didn’t know he was alive.

That got him. His voice lost the blah-blah tone, and rose to almost a scream.

“Damn yuh! Can’t yuh understand I’m croakin’ yuh? I’m just tellin’ yuh what for. I’m puttin’ out your light, yuh hi-jackin’ double-crossin’ dude crook. You’ll never see the sun rise again...”

I had been holding a chunk of firewood poised over the top of the wood stove, and, without warning, I tossed it at him — not in a hurry, just easily, smoothly.

If he’d had any guts he’d have stood his ground and fired, but he didn’t have the nerve. He quailed a bit before his muscles tightened his trigger finger, and that quailing was what I had counted on.

A knowledge of fencing is a fine thing, particularly for a crook, and I’d hooked the toe of that poker through the guard of his gun and jerked it out of his hand before his wrist had dropped from the blow I struck first.

“Now I’ll talk,” I said, as he cowered in the corner before the light that was in my eyes.

“You don’t need to tell me there’s been a crime trust organized. I know it. I bargained with the very head of that trust to receive certain papers in return for services rendered, and he held out on me. I can’t locate him, but I do know certain members of the gang, and I’m declaring war.

“You got hijacked out of fifty thousand dollars’ worth of hooch, and the reason you couldn’t get any trace of it afterward was because it was dumped in the bay. I didn’t want the hooch. I just wanted to attract somebody’s attention.

“Now you go back to the man that sent you and tell him to tell the man higher up to tell the man who is at the head of this crime trust that Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, is on the warpath, that until I get those papers they can’t operate. I’ll spoil every scheme they hatch up, ball up everything they try to pull; and if anyone harms a hair of the head of Helen Chadwick in the meantime, I’ll forget my rule of never packing a gun, and start on the warpath and murder the outfit.

“Now get going!”

It was tall talk, but it was the kind of talk that gets through with men like Dugan. Those crooks had never seen me really in action, but they had heard tales from the East. A man can’t be known as the Phantom Crook in a dozen states, because he can slip through the fingers of the police at will, without having something on the ball.

Squint Dugan knew that I meant what I said. He took the opportunity to go, and he didn’t stand on the order of his going. I knew that my message would reach the chief of that gang, would come to the ears of the man who was so careful to keep his identity a secret from all save his most trusted lieutenants. Also I knew that I had been careless, that I had slipped in allowing them to get a line on my apartment, and that I would have to get another hideout, and be more careful when I did it.

Before Dugan was down the stairs I was working on a new disguise, planning a new place to conceal myself. It was to be a war to the bitter end, with no quarter given nor asked, and I knew it and the other side knew it. Also, I had won the first round, taken the first trick.