The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  Duret looked shrewdly into Irene’s eyes. She returned his gaze evenly.

  “Listen, madame, I come from the police. Where is this fellow now?”

  “You are a detective?” Irene asked with awe in her voice. “Come, m’sieu, I will show you. He went down the cellar as I came to answer your ring.”

  Irene led the detective across the snuff factory to the cellar door. She descended the stairs boldly. Duret thought for a second that perhaps he should call for assistance. But this woman went so coolly, he drew his revolver and flashlight and followed.

  They saw no one in the cellar. Duret peered behind rubbish-filled packing cases and small trunks. The detective noticed a piece of strange mechanism. He was about to speak of it when Irene gestured toward a mark on the flagged floor. “See, m’sieu, is that not a footprint?”

  Duret stepped forward. He reached the spot on the floor Irene had indicated. He turned suddenly as he heard a subdued laugh behind ∗∗ him. Then the floor dropped beneath his feet and Duret was plunging through space.

  Irene ran to the edge of the trap. She flashed a torch into the black pit. The detective was on his feet now, groping for the torch he had dropped in falling.

  The dark shape of Le Loup appeared suddenly in the zone of light. Irene switched off the torch and left them in darkness. A red glow flashed from the tunnel three times and the floor rocked with the concussion of shots. Irene heard a sharp scream that did not come from Le Loup. She knew then that the Apache’s knife had found its mark in the dark. “Papa! Papa!” she cried hysterically.

  The killer of her father was dead! But Irene was reminded suddenly of the second object of her vengeance. She ran forward to the short lever that controlled the trapdoor. Her moment of ecstasy over Duret’s scream had cost her dear. The lever stuck in her hands when the trap was half closed. Irene threw her weight wildly against the iron bar. A gasp of exhaustion escaped her lips. Suddenly the lever moved freely. Irene jammed it home with a cry of exhaltation. And then she heard the mocking laugh of Le Loup at her side.

  His right arm wound around Irene’s side, binding her arms as he drew her against his body with the strength of a boa constrictor. Le Loup’s left hand manipulated the trap lever. He turned swiftly, raised Irene in his two arms and tossed her into the tunnel.

  Irene struck hard on the tunnel floor. She lay stunned for an instant but came to quickly with Le Loup’s mad laughter in her ears. She looked up and light dazzled her eyes. Le Loup had found the flashlight Irene had dropped. Irene was conscious of a writhing movement at her feet. She glanced down and saw Duret clutching at a knife that was buried in his thigh. The knife came from the wound and Le Loup backed from the edge of the trap. The detective arose on one knee.

  Irene saw the head and shoulders of Le Loup as he bent over the lever to close the trap. She screamed and grasped frantically at the edge of the lifting door. The trap was closing. With horror in her heart Irene saw she would be pinned by her hands between the closed trap and the cellar floor. She released her hold and dropped back into the tunnel. As she fell a faint breath of air struck her gently on the cheek. Something that gleamed bright whizzed past her head. Scream after scream came from Le Loup above. Then the trapdoor dropped. The tunnel was in utter darkness and the cries from Le Loup came faintly as from a great distance.

  Irene stood listening. Slowly the cries of Le Loup receded into silence. Irene could see nothing. But now she could hear the sharp squealing of many rats.

  “Duret! Duret! You killed him?”

  The detective did not answer.

  Panic seized Irene and she crawled about the tunnel groping for the detective. Her hand struck something and she heard a soft moan.

  “Duret! Duret!”

  She wondered fearfully if the detective were dead. Her hands went into his pockets and at last found a box of matches. She struck one and looked into the detective’s face. He was ghastly in the wan light of the match. She clutched at his wrist and cried out her joy when she felt the beat of life. The match end burnt her fingers and she struck another. Off to one side Irene caught a gleam of nickel. She reached out and found the flashlight the detective had dropped.

  Irene switched on the light and looked at the detective’s leg. She ripped off lengths of her skirt and fastened a tourniquet above the wound. Then she bound the wound itself. She worked over the detective with frenzied solicitude. The ironic thought that this was the man she had sought to kill did not cross her mind. She knew only that she was in terror of being alone. When she had bound Duret’s wound, Irene sat down beside him.

  She thought of the flashlight battery. That must be conserved.

  OURS later, it seemed, Duret recovered consciousness and asked for water. Irene recalled him to their predicament.

  The detective looked at her strangely, but said nothing. He ran a hand to his bandaged leg and looked more mystified than before. “Tell me,” he said at last, “is there a way to raise the trap from below?”

  Irene shook her head hopelessly. “No. The trap can be worked only from above. Once open, it may be set to close itself, but there is no way to raise it. One of my—my lodgers told me that arrangement was a precaution against thieves or an enemy getting into the tunnel. The tunnel is as old as Montreal. Most of it has been blocked up and built over. I suppose there was once some central place where the trap could be worked from below. I have never been down here before, but I understand there is only a small section of the tunnel now in existence.”

  “Then come,” Duret said, “we will investigate. I can walk on one foot if you will permit me to lean a little upon your shoulder.”

  They moved slowly down the littered passage. Rats scuttled beyond the range of their flashlight. As the light advanced, the squealing of the rats increased. Then in a few more minutes, they heard no more of the rats and the tunnel ended abruptly against a cement wall.

  Duret stood in deep thought. “The rats have gone,” he said slowly. “And they did not pass through this wall of cement!”

  The detective lowered himself to the ground and crawled back along the tunnel, examining the walls. The rats had dug many galleries, but they were nothing more than black holes.

  He was nearly halfway back to the trapdoor beneath the stone house when he shouted to Irene.

  She ran forward and dropped to her knees beside him.

  “Look!” he cried.

  Irene peered through a rat hole and saw twilight ahead. The detective put his mouth to the hole and shouted for help. He called until he was exhausted. But there was no answering cry from the world beyond.

  Irene drew the detective aside. “It is nearly night,” she said, “there is no one about these streets. It can be only a short distance. I can dig.”

  Irene went to work on the wall with her stiletto. The earth flew back from the rapid knife thrusts, but it was tedious work and at the end of an hour, though her fingers were raw from tearing away the loosened earth, she had progressed only a short distance.

  Duret lapsed into unconsciousness after his violent shouting for help and Irene toiled on alone. She stopped from time to time for a brief rest, and during one of these intervals tightened the tourniquet and replaced the sodden bandage on Duret’s leg.

  At last the wall before her crumbled and the dislodged earth fell outward. A great rush of fresh air nearly overwhelmed Irene. She widened the opening quickly and crawled through.

  The sky was lightening in the east and Irene saw that she was in the excavation for a new building that was being erected two blocks from the house on St. Amable Street.

  She was free. And with her safety her mind recalled the motive that had led up to this adventure in the tunnel. The primitive tourniquet and bandage she had wrapped around Duret’s wound would not stanch the flow of blood much longer. She had only to abandon him and her vengeance would be complete.

  Strangely enough, the thought gave Irene little satisfaction. Some subtle change had come over her in those first moments of te
rror in the tunnel. She recalled suddenly the throb of joy that had pulsed through her when she felt the feeble stirring of life in Duret’s wrist when she had believed him dead.

  Her mind reverted across the years to that night in the East End flat. For the first time she saw clearly the inevitability of the whole affair. Duret, her father, and her mother, all toys of the same malignant fate. Her father wrought up to insane resistance by the hysterical fears of her mother. Duret, entering the house to make a simple arrest, suddenly struck upon the head and seized in a death grip. With amazing clarity she saw the ruin the lust for vengeance had made of her own life. And now that it lay within the hollow of her hand, what an empty mockery that vengeance was.

  Irene dropped slowly to her knees and crawled back through the hole. She tried to rouse Duret. Failing this, she began to drag him through the narrow passage. The pain of movement, or the rush of fresh air to his lungs, aroused the detective to consciousness as Irene drew him clear of the hole.

  Duret looked about him in surprise. His eyes turned up to look deep into Irene’s. Her gaze dropped.

  “You came back for me,” he said tenderly. His tone changed. “Listen, go to the cellar. And go with caution. See if Le Loup is there. Put on a coat to cover your torn dress, then come back to me.”

  Irene ran up the ramp to the sidewalk and went swiftly to the hideout. She climbed the stairs and procured a coat and flashlight from her room. Back downstairs, she crept into the cellar. She saw Le Loup doubled over the lever by the trapdoor, the handle of his own great knife protruding from his stomach.

  Irene ran back to Duret. The detective seemed surprised, and smiled at her return.

  “He is dead!” she said quietly.

  The detective nodded. He lifted his eyes whimsically. “Now tell me, why did you do that thing to me?”

  She flushed and turned away.

  “And why did you later save my life?” he added.

  Irene laughed harshly. Words surged from her heart and she told him of her band of thieves. She told him, too, of her identity, of the pinch of snuff, and of her plot to kill him.

  “Then why did you not let me bleed to death?” Duret demanded.

  “Ah, give me no credit for that. Alone I would have gone mad in that place!”

  “Why did you wander off from your father’s room that night?” Duret asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “My mother was dead; my father was dead; the police took away my two baby sisters, and I was afraid they would come back and take me. I went far that night. I was in St. Henri shivering on a corner when a crippled beggar came upon me. He took me to his cellar. Later this beggar told me it was a detective named Duret who had shot my father. I swore to kill this Duret.”

  Duret’s face blazed with anger. “This beggar, what did he want of you?”

  “Nothing. He was kind to me. He provided me with food, shelter, and clothes, and he taught me the tricks of the underworld. I cooked for him. He was old, and I relieved his loneliness.”

  “He did you an awful wrong!” Duret said fiercely. “There is a pencil and notebook in my pocket. Thank you.”

  Duret wrote rapidly. “Go now to the hotel in the market-place and telephone for help to be sent me. Then go to this address. There you will find your father and your sisters. He was not killed, but dangerously wounded that night….”

  A convulsive sob shook Irene. She cried, “Papa! Papa!” and swayed upon her feet.

  Duret looked alarmed. “Get help for me quickly!” he said in a sharp voice. Irene steadied, and Duret continued. “Later, we found your father steady work; he is well and prosperous. We combed the city for you at that time, but your beggar had hid you well!

  “Stay with your father and say nothing of this business. The police will not question you. My report will deal only with the snuff factory and the cellar. Later I shall come to see you and we may discuss your future. Now leave me and send help quickly. I am weak and tired.”

  “And you mean, Duret, that you do not arrest me?”

  Duret smiled whimsically. “Arrest you over a trifling pinch of snuff? Hardly!”

  Killer in the Rain

  Raymond Chandler

  THE FOURTH SHORT STORY published by Raymond Chandler (1889-1959), “Killer in the Rain” was never reprinted during his lifetime. As with “Curtain,” which had its magazine appearance the following year, Chandler had “cannibalized” the story for his first novel, The Big Sleep. Six characters and much of eleven chapters in the novel were lifted in whole or in part from “Killer in the Rain,” generally being fleshed out to provide more fully developed characters.

  Names were changed. None of Chandler’s short stories featured Philip Marlowe, the hero of all seven of his novels, though whether named Carmody, Dalmas, Malvern, Mallory, or unnamed, as in the present story, they were interchangeable with his famous creation.

  The wild young woman who is the catalyst for all that transpires in both the novel and this story is named Carmen Dravec here, but she is Carmen Stern-wood in The Big Sleep. Drug-addicted, alcoholic, perhaps a bit dim, almost certainly a sociopath, the beautiful Carmen was played by the now-forgotten Martha Vickers in the 1946 Warner Bros, movie that starred Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe. The novel added a sister who tried to protect the reputation of her younger sibling by getting the detective to end his investigation.

  “Killer in the Rain” was originally published as a novelette in the January 1935 issue of Black Mask.

  Killer in the Rain

  Raymond Chandler

  He came to his feet, his hand on the

  gun, but the gun not in his hand. I

  dodged past him and turned as two

  men came into the room

  I

  E WERE SITTING in a room at the Berglund.I was on the side of the bed, and Dravec was in the easy, chair. It was my room.

  Rain beat very hard against the windows. They were shut tight and it was hot in the room and] had a little fan going on the table. The breeze from it hit Dravec’s face high up, lifted his heavy black hair, moved the longer bristles in the fat path of eyebrow that went across his face in a solid line. He looked like a bouncer who had come into money.

  He showed me some of his gold teeth and said:

  “What you got on me?”

  He said it importantly, as if anyone who knew anything would know quite a lot about him.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You’re clean, as far as I know.”

  He lifted a large hairy hand and stared at it solidly for a minute.

  “You don’t get me. A feller named M’Gee sent me here. Violets M’Gee.”

  “Fine. How is Violets these days?” Violets M’Gee was a homicide dick in the sheriff’s office.

  He looked at his large hand and frowned. “No—you still don’t get it. I got a job for you.”

  “I don’t go out much any more,” I said. “I’m getting kind of frail.”

  He looked around the room carefully, bluffing a bit, like a man not naturally observant.

  “Maybe it’s money,” he said.

  “Maybe it is,” I said.

  He had a belted suede raincoat on. He tore it open carelessly and got out a wallet that was not quite as big as a bale of hay. Currency stuck out of it at careless angles. When he slapped it down on his knee it made a fat sound that was pleasant to the ear. He shook money out of it, selected a few bills from the bunch, stuffed the rest back, dropped the wallet on the floor and let it lie, arranged five century notes like a tight poker hand and put them under the base of the fan on the table.

  That was a lot of work. It made him grunt.

  “I got lots of sugar,” he said.

  “So I see. What do I do for that, if I get it?”

  “You know me now, huh?”

  “A little better.”

  I got an envelope out of an inside pocket and read to him loud from some scribbling on the back.

  “Dravec, Anton or Tony. Former Pittsburgh steelworker, truck guard,
all-round muscle stiff. Made a wrong pass and got shut up. Left town, came West. Worked on an avocado ranch at El Seguro. Came up with a ranch of his own. Sat right on the dome when the El Seguro oil boom burst. Got rich. Lost a lot of it buying into other people’s dusters. Still has enough. Serbian by birth, six feet, two hundred and forty, one daughter, never known to have had a wife. No police record of any consequence. None at all since Pittsburgh.”

  I lit a pipe.

  “Jeeze,” he said. “Where you promote all that?”

  “Connections. What’s the angle?”

  He picked the wallet off the floor and moused around inside it with a couple of square fingers for a while, with his tongue sticking out between his thick lips. He finally got out a slim brown card and some crumpled slips of paper. He pushed them at me.

  The card was in gold type, very delicately done. It said: “Mr. Harold Hardwicke Steiner,” and very small in the corner, “Rare Books and De Luxe Editions.” No address or phone number.

  The white slips, three in number, were simple I.O.U.s for a thousand dollars each, signed: “Carmen Dravec” in a sprawling, moronic handwriting.

  I gave it all back to him and said: “Blackmail?”

  He shook his head slowly and something gentle came into his face that hadn’t been there before.

  “It’s my little girl—Carmen. This Steiner, he bothers her. She goes to his joint all the time, makes whoopee. He makes love to her, I guess. I don’t like it.”

  I nodded. “How about the notes?”

  “I don’t care nothin’ about the dough. She plays games with him. The hell with that. She’s what you call man-crazy. You go tell this Steiner to lay off Carmen. I break his neck with my hands. See?”

  All this in a rush, with deep breathing. His eyes got small and round, and furious. His teeth almost chattered.

  I said: “Why have me tell him? Why not tell him yourself?”