The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

I slid into the warehouse and picked my way up stairs jammed with refuse. On the third floor I found a long plank lying among dust-covered heaps of rusty, outmoded machinery. I dragged the plank to the window and eased it across the alley. It reached the sill on the other side with a foot to spare.

  Cautiously, giddy with fear, I worked my weight out on the sagging plank. I had reached the other side when the thing canted sideways. I caught at the open sash as the far end of the plank slipped clear, slapped at me, and crashed thirty feet down to the cobbled court. Weak as water, I half fell over the window sill.

  The room I was in was evidently a storeroom. Cases of all sizes, crates, and boxes crowded all but an aisle to a door. I opened it noiselessly and looked into a private banquet room. A thug-like porter was mopping the floor.

  I kept back behind the door until he had worked around to where I waited. Then I leaped. Both my hands got him around the throat. He was gasping for breath when I released him a second and swung my Sunday punch to the point of his jaw. He went limp.

  I devoted precious minutes to knotting a twisted table-cloth about his wrists and ankles, and gagging him with a napkin. By the time I’d dragged him under a table, I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to bother me for a while.

  There was the sound of voices from a door that I took to be Russo’s office. I tried the knob silently and found the door locked. Now I could make out the words. It was Russo speaking. “You can yell your head off, sweetheart. Nobody will hear you. Up here we are very safe.”

  I tiptoed toward the front of the place, entered a cloakroom, and followed it through to a door on the other side. I came out on the landing of a stair-case. And, as luck would have it, there was another entrance to Russo’s office! Prayerfully I tried the knob. Thank God, Russo hadn’t thought it necessary to lock this door!

  I had it open a fraction of an inch when I froze. Voices came from the banquet room. Hands rattled the door I had found bolted. “You there, boss? We went to the dame’s apartment, and the guy wasn’t there.”

  “He wasn’t there?” It was Russo’s unbelieving bellow. “I will be with you in ten minutes. You mugs wait downstairs until I call you.”

  Feet shuffled away.

  And I made my move. I opened the door wide.

  Louis Russo was bending Polly back over a table. The dress she had changed to was now more tattered than the one in which I had first seen her. The gangster ran his tongue over thick lips—

  He hadn’t even looked around when I started my charge. But the man was quick. Before I was half way across the floor, he’d whirled and snatched for his shoulder holster. The flame of the gun seared my shoulder as I tackled him. My hand clamped down on his wrist.

  For a little while it was touch and go. I threw my weight into bending his arm back in an attempt to get the gun. Russo was plenty husky. The gun exploded again and its lead ploughed a furrow in my ankle.

  I redoubled my pressure and heard the crack of a bone. The gun dropped. Russo writhed like an eel. His teeth closed in one of my wrists as he lunged for the gun with his good arm. I kicked it out of his reach, wrenched free, and leaped for it myself.

  Coming up with the gun, I found that Russo had been as quick as I. He held Polly in front of him as a shield. “Shoot if you dare!” he gritted. Then, “Tony! Joe! Smash the door down! Come in!”

  The door shook as powerful bodies lunged against it. I fired twice as the lock gave way, then snapped the trigger and heard the hammer click on an empty cylinder.

  Two guns bored into my kidneys. I was backed against the wall and held in impotence. Once again my hands and wrists were tied expertly.

  Russo grinned. “Now leave him here, and you boys go outside until I call you.”

  Leering like a madman, Russo waited until his men had left. Then once more he turned to Polly who cringed away from him. His brutal hand reached out and snatched even more of her few remaining garments from her.

  A red film of hate and rage blinded me. Bound as I was, I tried to dive for the man. He turned from the girl and began methodically to beat me with his revolver. Blood poured from my lacerated scalp, from my torn face, but still he raised the gun and brought it down. At any moment he could have knocked me out, but that was not his intention. In cold blood he hacked and cut, and I could do nothing but take it.

  Eventually he tired of his sport. He slipped a cartridge into the gun. “You’ve been asking for it,” he said. “You’re going to get it!”

  I could actually see his finger grow white as it tightened on the trigger.

  At that instant Polly Knight came out of her semi-conscious state. Half-naked, she hurled herself in front of Russo. “Stop! Don’t kill him!” she begged.

  Russo shoved her away, slapped her face brutally. He brought up the gun again toward me….

  A fusillade of shots hammered in from the banquet room. One of Russo’s men lurched over the threshold and fell, blood gushing from his throat.

  Russo fired once toward the door, then squealed and pitched to the floor under a hail of lead.

  The film cleared from my eyes and I saw Inspector Daly come into the room followed by two men in uniform. Polly Knight, ignoring her state of nudity, knelt beside me, loosening the knots that held me.

  Daly grinned at me. “That fathead Finger, my relief, told me about your call. Technically, he may have been within his rights, but I thought I’d better look into the matter!” He smiled down at Polly. “I’ll take the boys and wait outside until the young lady has had a chance to cover herself up a little.”

  I gave her my coat and sat patiently while she wiped blood from my face. “Was it worth it—all for a gangster’s girl?” she whispered.

  I put an arm around her, not caring how much the effort hurt. “I don’t care what kind of girl you are,” I told her. “It was worth it!”

  There was a devil dancing in her eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m not a gangster’s girl. And my name isn’t Polly Knight. Don’t you remember ‘God’s Good to the Irish’?”

  I stared at her in amazement. “You’re Polly Day!” I gasped. “You played the lead in the show!”

  She nodded. “But the show folded. I was broke and I got a job for a private detective agency. I was sent down here because there were indications that Russo’s mob was behind a series of hold-ups. I went to work in the Little Albania as a hostess. I was trying to get something on the gang—”

  I stopped her explanations with a kiss. “That’ll be enough for now,” I said. “You can give me installment two of your story when we get back to my apartment.”

  The Corpse in the Crystal &

  He Got What He Asked For

  D. B. McCandless

  AN ELEMENT OF a great deal of pulp fiction that correctly prevents it from being regarded as serious literature is the absurd reliance on the reader to accept virtually any far-fetched coincidence or series of events. The suspension of disbelief is often pushed to the very brink of fantasy.

  The Sarah Watson stories of D. B. McCandless are a case in point. They are humorous and charming, and the protagonist runs against stereotypes. She is not a sexy redhead in tight, low-cut sweaters who has every man she encounters eating out of her hand. She is, instead, middle-aged, heavy, dowdy, and relatively charmless. This element of originality, as well as a fast-paced narrative, combine to make the stories among the most readable of their kind—so much so that two tales of “The Female She-Devil” have been included in this collection. Do not, however, judge the stories based on credibility, as they will fall somewhat short. Even allowing for the difference of era between the 1930s and the present day, railroad and airplane travel had little in common with the events related in the second of these adventures.

  “The Corpse in the Crystal” and “He Got What He Asked For” (January 1937) were originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly.

  The Corpse in the Crystal

  D. B. McCandless

  “You know everything—

  and ifs jus
t too bad for you.”

  A MASSIVE individual in blue and brass marched resoundingly down a tiled corridor and halted before a door. Scabby gilt letters on the door said: “Watson Detective Agency.” The massive individual pounced upon the door knob, wrenched it and swung himself into the office beyond.

  A long, languid young man with red hair let his feet thump from his desk to the floor, sat upright, said: “Cheese it, the cops!” and relaxed again, grinning.

  The massive individual, standing spread-legged and stroking a black eyebrow thick enough to have served as a mustache for a daintier man, greeted the young man.

  “ ‘Lo, Ben Todd. Where’s your boss?”

  “ ‘Lo, Sergeant. Sarah Watson has gone out.”

  “I can see that, even if I am a cop. Where’s she gone?”

  “Crazy, I guess. She said she was going to consult a crystal gazer.”

  Sergeant O’Reilly cried out and shook his fists at the ceiling.

  “Damn Sarah Watson!” he exclaimed. “A crystal gazer, eh! I might have known she’d get ahead of me!”

  O’Reilly sat down heavily in the chair beside Sarah Watson’s roll-top desk. He reached a thick arm and laid heavy fingers upon a newspaper lying there. He lifted the paper and stared at a square hole cut neatly therein. He took a square clipping from his pocket and fitted it into the hole in the newspaper.

  “Read this, Ben Todd.”

  Ben Todd shambled across, lounged over the Sergeant’s shoulder and read. The clipping fitted into the empty space in Sarah’s newspaper, under “Letters from Readers.” It read:

  Dear Editor: People say all fortune tellers, mediums and crystal gazers are fakes. Two weeks ago, I sat before a crystal ball and the most wonderful seer in the world looked into the crystal and saw the body of a certain well known wealthy young man laying dead in a marsh, with cat-tails drooping over him and a bone-handled knife in his heart. That was two weeks ago, and the next day, the body of that same well known, wealthy young man was found dead, laying in a marsh, just exactly as the wonderful seer had seen it in the crystal. Now that young man lays in his grave and the police can’t find his murderer. And then people say crystal gazers are fakes!

  Yours respectfully,

  Lily Tarrant

  “A certain well-known, wealthy young man,” Ben Todd whistled, went on. “Found in a swamp … with a bone-handled knife in his heart… Alexander Courtwell!”

  “The same!” O’Reilly agreed. “I wonder if this wonderful seer saw the ring when he saw the corpse in the crystal?”

  “Ring?”

  “The ring we found under the corpse. The big onyx ring with the two big diamonds in it. The ring we knew belonged to Honest Jim Carson.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake, O’Reilly, if you knew, why isn’t Honest Jim Carson in jail for the Courtwell killing?”

  “Honest Jim Carson,” said O’Reilly, “is in his grave. He was there, of unnatural causes, three days before Courtwell was killed.”

  “Oh!” said Ben Todd.

  O’Reilly got to his feet, cast the crumpled newspaper from him, and shook his fist again at Sarah’s roll-top desk. Ben Todd said, thoughtfully:

  “So … a crystal gazer saw Alexander Court-well dead before he was found dead … and Sarah’s gone to consult a crystal gazer!”

  “Damn her brains! There’s ten thousand dollars reward for the apprehension of Court-well’s murderer, Ben Todd, and that Watson woman had to set her eagle eye on that clipping before I … Wait!”

  O’Reilly grabbed the ‘phone on top of the roll-top desk. He shouted a number, glared at Ben Todd.

  “Evening Star? O’Reilly. Yeah, the cop. Gimme Watkins. You, Watkins? Listen, you made one bad boner, letting that Tarrant woman’s letter get into print. You made another bad boner not calling the papers off the street quick enough after I ordered you to. Let’s see, now if you’ve made another boner? Anybody get the Tarrant woman’s address out of you since that paper went on the streets? What? They did? She did? I might have known! I might have … Oh, God!”

  O’Reilly slammed up the ‘phone and whirled on Ben Todd.

  “That Watson woman is a liar and a thief,” he roared. “She called up the Star and told ‘em she was assisting me on the Courtwell case. She asked for that Tarrant woman’s address and she got it.”

  “She would.”

  “She got it. Which means she’s probably with the crystal gazer now, picking his brains dry, and she’ll have that ten thousand dollars reward in her damn, thieving fists before I …”

  “Listen,” said Ben Todd. “I don’t allow anybody to damn Sarah Watson. She may be an old battle-axe and an old liar but she’s not a damn old thief.”

  “She is a damn old thief!” shouted O’Reilly, thrusting his blue jaw close to Ben Todd’s: “I came here with every intention of sharing that reward with her if she’d help me by going to that crystal gazer and picking his brains dry before we closed in on him. Now she’s got the jump on me, and she’ll cop the whole reward!”

  Ben Todd yawned and said:

  “Well, you’re giving her a good start, anyway, O’Reilly, while you stand here, sizzling in your own grease. Listen, O’Reilly! I just thought of something! If the crystal gazer knew about the murder before the murder was done, then he’s involved, and if he’s involved …”

  “If he’s involved! Of course he’s involved! What else do you think I’ve been thinking? What I should have done was to close in on him first and sweat him after, instead of thinking of conniving with Sarah to pick his brains first …”

  Ben Todd reached for his hat and took a long stride toward the door.

  “The old girl may be with him now!” he cried. “If he gets wise to what she’s after, then Sarah’s in …”

  O’Reilly reached over Ben Todd’s shoulder and opened the door.

  “Of course she’s in danger!” he admitted. “What else do you think I’ve been thinking? If you don’t move quicker, Ben Todd, I’ll grind down your heels.”

  At just about the moment that Sergeant O’Reilly first made his entrance into the office of the Watson Detective Agency, Sarah Watson herself was leaning upon the rickety stoop railing of a certain flathouse, conversing with a janitress perfumed with gin.

  The thick shaft of Sarah’s sturdily corseted body was wrapped in nondescript, rusty black garments. Her antique headgear was set at a hurried angle on her straggling gray hair. There was a slight, unaccustomed tinge of hectic red on the high cheek bones under her grey, bristling-browed eyes. There was, however, no hint of excitement in the hoarse, downright voice with which she fired questions at the vague and wav-ery target of the janitress.

  “She left in a hurry, eh? In a big, black car with red wheels? Walking between two men, eh? Did you get a look at those two men?”

  “Well, now.” The janitress ran a soiled hand over her mouth. “Well, I tried to get a look, because it seemed kind of queer, Mrs. Tarrant going off with two strange men like that and her a new widow woman that’s always trying to communicate with her dead husband through the spirits and such, but the men walked awful fast. Seems to me they was both dark and one of ‘em had his lip puckered down at the side by a scar, sort of, and the car was the swellest thing on four wheels I ever seen, four red wheels …”

  “What time? Think, woman! Remember I’m paying you to think.”

  “Am thinking. Fifty cents will buy … Well, don’t glare at me that way, missus. They left right before twelve, because I remember, I was wiping up the halls right after and I smelled something in Mrs. Tarrant’s kitchen and her door was open and I edged in and the smell was beans—burnt to a crisp.”

  “Burnt to a crisp, eh? Mrs. Tarrant must have left in a hurry! Well, here’s your fifty cents and take my advice and put it in the bank and not down your gullet.”

  Sarah Watson started briskly down the stoop, wheeled abruptly and transfixed the janitress with a glinting eye.

  “By the way, what’s the name of the crystal gaze
r Mrs. Tarrant goes to?” she asked. “I might find her there …”

  “You might. She’s been running there enough, trying to see her dead husband in heaven, but it’s my opinion she’s been looking in the wrong place for him … Don’t growl, missus. It’s Chariot she goes to. Chariot, his name is, and his place is on Green Street, Number …”

  Sarah took a little black notebook from her capacious handbag and noted down the address.

  A ramshackle vehicle which faintly resembled an automobile chugged to a stop at a corner on Green Street. Sarah Watson stepped out and strode down the street.

  Halfway down the block, she passed a dirty first-floor window with a sign in it which said: “Chariot.” She strode by the window, about-faced suddenly, and disappeared down an odorous alley which led to a backyard.

  Five minutes later, she mounted the first flight of an iron fire escape ladder and was sitting, bolt upright, on the top step of the ladder, gazing calmly through a rift in the dirty curtains on the open back window of Chariot’s flat.

  There was no one in the kitchen beyond the curtains but something was sizzling on the stove. The nostrils of Sarah’s beak quivered appreciatively as a little breeze blew the fragrance out.

  Presently, a door in the kitchen opened. For a moment, the aroma of cooking was diluted by the heavy odor of incense and the room beyond the kitchen showed dimly. Then, a swarthy man in a white robe and white turban closed himself into the kitchen, ripped off his white wrappings, flung them on the floor, yanked off his dark, pointed beard, slung it at a chair, kicked at the discarded robe and turban and bent over the sink. Outside on the fire escape, Sarah Watson nodded grimly.

  The man turned from the sink suddenly, facing the window. Sarah edged closer to the wall of the building. The man was clothed in dark trousers and undershirt. He was towelling vigorously. His face was no longer swarthy. It was white, very white—and young.

  A fuzzy grey kitten rolled out from under the kitchen table and dabbed at the fringes of black beard protruding from the edge of the chair. The man threw down his towel, picked the kitten up by its scruff, grinned at it, and thrust its soft body under his chin. With the kitten cuddled between his collar bone and his jaw, the man bent over a pan on the stove and expertly flipped over a sizzling steak. He bent over another pan, stirring …