The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  “Just a moment, Captain. Please! I am very busy and—”

  “I won’t take long.”

  Hard-eyed, MacBride elbowed Landau aside and entered a large, sumptuous room. Kennedy trailed amiably behind him. Landau closed the door quietly.

  Cardiac was standing on the other side of a tremendous library table. In a large, straight-backed chair sat a youth dressed in tweeds.

  “Cardiac,” muttered MacBride.

  “Hello, Skipper.”

  Landau removed his pince-nez, dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, came briskly from the door.

  “Really, Captain, this is a most pleasant surprise—”

  “Pleasant?” MacBride said dully.

  “Naturally I didn’t expect—”

  “Just a minute.” MacBride raised a palm. “I’ll talk first.” He flexed his lips, shot a dark glance at Cardiac, at the youth in tweeds, at Dr. Landau.

  “You phoned Cardiac at 11:30 this morning, Doctor, didn’t you?”

  “Really, I can’t remember—”

  “You don’t have to. You phoned him. That’s settled. I was in his office then. Your phone call upset him. It upset him because I happened to be in the office and he couldn’t talk to you then. Why couldn’t he?”

  The youth’s eyes traveled slyly from one to another.

  Cardiac cut in: “You’re certainly making a nuisance of yourself, skipper. Why don’t you get wise to yourself?”

  “Why couldn’t you talk to him, Cardiac? I know. Because I was there. Because the things you had to talk about were not for my ears.… Who’s the pink-cheeked boy?”

  “Mr. Avarill,” Landau said.

  MacBride said: “So you were Dan Rand’s doctor, Landau? You were the man who told him he’d have to leave Richmond City? Was that the first time you told him?”

  “Of course!”

  “Hell! I don’t believe it! His wife told me he’d been acting queer for the past few months. You told him before yesterday. And what happened? He wouldn’t leave. He wouldn’t leave his business interests. Do you use perfume, Doctor?”

  “No.”

  MacBride looked around. “Someone in this room does. How about you, Mr. Avarill?”

  The pink-cheeked boy grinned. “Why, Captain!”

  MacBride crossed to him, bent down. “No, it’s not you.”

  “My—! This is rich!” Cardiac exploded.

  Kennedy was sitting on the edge of the large library table. He fished in his pockets for a cigarette, found none. He knocked open a large box on the table. It was empty. He knocked open another and found cigarettes; put one between his lips, started to strike a match, paused. He frowned, picked up the empty box, opened it and sniffed.

  Landau complained: “You certainly make yourself at home, Mr. Kennedy.”

  “Don’t I, though! … Nice sandalwood box, Doctor.”

  MacBride was standing at his shoulder. “That’s what I smell,” he said. He snatched the box from Kennedy’s hand, inhaled. He tossed the box back on the desk and said: “That’s the smell. That’s the perfume I’ve been looking for.”

  Landau said warmly: “This is becoming ridiculous, Captain!”

  “Is it?” MacBride snarled, turning on him. “It’s the smell of sandalwood in the gun that killed Dan Rand. The gun was kept in that box for a while. The odor of sandalwood—if that’s what Kennedy called it—was absorbed by the oil in the gun. It stayed with the gun, not as strong as the smell in the box—but it was there; it was faint but it was there!”

  The pink-cheeked youth smiled brightly but said nothing. Cardiac lifted his chin, pursed his lips hard. Dr. Landau looked about the room in nervous fits and starts, shrugging, saying: “Of course … this is peculiar … I hardly know what to say … to think … but of course—”

  “You had access to Rand’s home,” MacBride cut in. “When were you there last—before his death? And don’t lie, because it’ll be easy to check up.”

  Landau cleared his throat, touched his necktie. “I think—yes, I dropped in there for a few moments the evening before his—ah—death.”

  “How long do you consider a few moments?”

  “Well”—he cleared his throat—“I daresay I was there for about—well—half an hour.”

  “In Dan’s den?”

  “I—ah—yes, of course: Dan’s den. To be sure!”

  MacBride said: “The gun was in his drawer during the day. The maid saw it when she was cleaning up. It will be easy for me to check up and find out if anyone was in that room between the time she cleaned up and the time you were there.”

  Cardiac picked up his coat, flung it over his arm. “I wouldn’t take cracks like that from any cop, Doc. Remember, you don’t have to answer him.… Well, I’ve got to run along.”

  MacBride turned. “Get back, Cardiac!”

  “Now look here, you flatfoot—”

  “Get back, Cardiac. I’ve stepped into something that’s just burning my toes. Dan Rand was double-crossed by somebody—”

  “I’d watch,” drawled Kennedy, “the young Joe College over there. I don’t like his smile.”

  Landau wrung his hands. “This is positively the most absurd situation I have ever—”

  “Of course,” said MacBride sarcastically, “sandalwood boxes are as common as egg crates in this burg! … You get the hell back there, Cardiac. I told you you’re not leaving this room!”

  “I’ll be damned if I won’t!” whipped back Cardiac. “If you want to hold me, shamus, go out and get a summons! I’m a busy man! I’ve got no time to play tag with a second-rate police captain!” He jerked his thumb. “Come on, Ralph. We’re leaving.”

  The pink-cheeked youth rose cheerfully. “Right with you, Jim, old boy!”

  MacBride pivoted, caught hold of the youth’s vest and flung him back into the chair. The youth’s teeth clicked. He jumped right up again. MacBride flung him into the chair a second time, and this time the chair went over, the youth sprawled on the floor. He lay there, propped on his elbows; he smiled wistfully, sadly, reflectively, a lock of golden hair curving down over one golden eyebrow.

  MacBride roared: “When I tell you to sit down, mister, I don’t mean stand up!”

  “Captain, Captain!” Landau panted. “Don’t—don’t aggravate him that way. Don’t—”

  “And will you,” ripped out MacBride, swiveling, “stop sticking your nose in my business! … Cardiac, come back here!”

  Kennedy yelled: “Look out!”

  MacBride swung around, his gun half drawn.

  Landau cried out and dived for the youth. The youth was chuckling liquidly, resting on one elbow. The gun exploded in his other hand and stopped Landau in mid-career. MacBride fired and his slug nailed the youth to the floor. Landau started stumbling forward, choking. He gathered unbalanced speed, went careening across the room, knocked over a floor lamp, crashed head-on against the wall and slumped to the floor. The youth writhed on his back, chuckling wildly, beating his palms upon the floor.

  A door banged.

  “Cardiac,” said Kennedy.

  “You stay here!” MacBride said.

  He broke into a run, yanked open the door, collided with the butler and fell down as the front door slammed shut. The butler cried out. MacBride untangled himself, rose, lunged for the front door and yelled:

  “Cohegan!”

  But Cohegan was not in the phaeton. Through the trees, MacBride saw Cardiac at the wheel; heard the blast of the motor and saw the car lurch forward, gather speed. He galloped down the graveled driveway, reached the sidewalk, turned left and stretched his legs in a hard-heeled run. Raising his gun, he did not fire. There were other automobiles moving in the street. But he fired in the air. Beyond was a main highway and he thought a cop might be in the neighborhood. Running, he fired again.

  And then he heard, ahead, three blasts from another gun. He saw the phaeton whip from side to side; heard the scream of its brakes and the scream of other brakes as other cars sought to avoid it
. Heeling over, the phaeton slammed across the curbstone; its radiator and hood doubled up like a folded accordion and the sound of the crash was drowned instantly in the roar of the explosion that followed. Flame daggered its way through smoke; bricks flew from the building into which the car crashed.

  ennedy picked up the telephone, sat on the library table and swung his legs. “Central 1000,” he said into the mouthpiece. His world-weary eyes traveled from the dead youth to the dead doctor, and he sighed. “City desk, flower.” He lay down on the table, held the mouthpiece above him.

  “Abe,” he said, “this is that famous journalist and bon vivant, Kennedy.… So now dust your ears. Old Stephen J. MacBride did it again.… I’m telling you! Listen. A young punk named Ralph Avarill accidentally shot and killed Dr. Amos Landau in the latter’s home, 26 Cypress Street.… Yeah, the punk meant to kill the skipper, but things got balled up. Then MacBride knocked off the punk. At that moment Jim Cardiac took it into his head to lam, and MacBride high-tailed after him in the well-known MacBride manner. They’re not back yet.

  “Meantime, get a load of this nice little bedtime story. Landau told it to me and then died. The punk—Ralph Avarill—killed Dan Rand. He was a hop-head.… No, sweetness, not Rand; the punk. The punk was a friend of Cardiac’s, and Landau was a silent backer of Cardiac’s interests. Ostensibly a fine medico, he was also a dealer in dope and an addict himself. He met Dan Rand seven years ago at a boxfight where he attended a boxer who later died from the effect of a blow to the heart. He became Rand’s personal physician.

  “When this trouble between Rand and Cardiac began, grew hotter, Cardiac went to his silent partner Landau and wanted him to put Rand out of the way. Landau thought of a better method. He began working on Rand mentally, telling him he was a lunger and advising him to sell out all his business interests here and go West and live the simple life. Well, it didn’t quite work out. It wore Rand down, but he was a sticker. Finally Landau told him he would die if he didn’t leave. But before he told him that—in fact, the evening before—he dropped in at Rand’s apartment and while Rand was out of the room Landau swiped his gun, went home and put it in a sandalwood box until the punk called for it. Next day he told Rand his chances of living were mighty small. He thought Rand would go home and tell his wife and that his telling her would make an open and shut suicide case when the cops found the body.…

  “What? … Sure, the punk was to tail Rand. And he did. Tailed him all afternoon and finally, at between 9:30 and ten o’clock, walked him to that abandoned warehouse and let him have it with the gun Landau had stolen from Rand’s desk. And when Rand fell, his hand came out of his pocket and he dropped the gun he’d bought. The punk picked it up, left the other—Just a minute.”

  MacBride had come darkly into the room. “Tell him Cardiac’s dead, Kennedy. Cohegan objected to the squad car being stolen.”

  “Where was Cohegan?”

  “Down in a fancy grocery store on the corner, mooching apples.”

  Luck

  Lester Dent

  LESTER DENT (1904–1959) was born in La Plata, Missouri, but grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. While working as a Western Union telegraph operator, he learned that a coworker had sold a story to a pulp magazine for the princely sum of $450. As a reader of the pulps, he decided to try it himself and sold an action story, “Pirate Cay,” to Top Notch for the September 1929 issue. Soon after, he moved to New York for a full-time writing job with Dell Publishing, then had the chance to launch a new series for Street & Smith. After staggering success with The Shadow, S&S hoped to duplicate it with a detective who used various gadgets to fight crime, and Dent created Doc Savage under the house name Kenneth Robeson; the first issue hit the stands in March 1933. The series lasted until 1949, with 181 issues, of which 159 were written by Dent.

  After Doc Savage, the character for which Dent received the most acclaim was Oscar Sail, the loner boatman who appeared in only two Black Mask stories, “Sail” and “Angelfish,” which have been relentlessly anthologized as outstanding examples of the hard-boiled pulp detective. He began a third story, “Cay,” but when his editor, Joseph Shaw, left the magazine, he abandoned it. Dent wrote the earliest draft of “Sail” in the spring of 1936 on his schooner, Albatross, while anchored at Miami’s City Yacht Basin—where “Sail” is set. He once told Frank Gruber, a prolific pulp writer himself, as well as a historian of the genre, that he had been forced to rewrite both stories so many times that he did not like the final product.

  The story in this collection, “Luck,” is an early draft of that first adventure about Oscar Sail. As there were numerous drafts, it cannot be said with authority that this is the first version, but it is safe to say that it is a very early one, and certainly one that Dent preferred to the published story. Thanks to the novelist and noted pulp scholar Will Murray, the agent for the Lester Dent estate, for the history of this important publication.

  “Sail” was published in the October 1936 issue of Black Mask. “Luck” has never before appeared in print.

  Luck

  Lester Dent

  THE FISH TREMBLED ITS TAIL AS the knife cut off its head, then red ran out of it and made a mess on the planks and spread enough to cover the wet red marks where two human hands had tried to hold to the dock edge.

  Sail put the palm of his own hand in the mess.

  The small policeman came from shore. He had shoved through the small green gate with the discreet sign, Private Yachts—No Admittance, at the shore end of the swanky pier, and was under the neat green canopy, tramping in the rear edge of the glare from his flashlight. His leather and brass glistened in the light. He was cautious enough to walk in the middle of the narrow long pier, but did enough stamping with his feet to show he was the law.

  When he reached Sail, he stopped. His cap had a cock. His lower lip was loose on the left side, as if depressed by a pipe stem that wasn’t there. He was young, bony and brown.

  He asked, “That you give that yell?”

  Sail picked up the hook and wet line. He held the hook close to his left palm. He grimaced at the small oozing rip in the brown callus of the palm. It was about the kind of a hole the fishhook would have made.

  “Yeah?” the cop said vaguely. “You snagged the hand on a hook, eh? Made you yell?” The policeman toed the fish head’s open mouthful of snake-fang teeth.

  “Barracuda,” he said, but not as if that was on his mind.

  Red drops came out of the ripped palm, fattened on the lower edge, came loose and fell on the dock. Sail picked the fish up with his other hand. When he stood his straightest, he was still shorter than the small cocky policeman.

  The officer splashed light on Sail. He saw the round jolly brown features of a thirtyish man who probably liked his food, who would put weight on until he was forty, and spend the rest of his life secretly trying to take it off. Sail’s hair might have been unraveled rope, and looked as if it had been finger-combed. Some of the black had been scrubbed out of his black polo shirt. Washings had bleached his black dungarees; they fitted his small hips tightly and stopped halfway below the knees. Bare feet had squarish toes. Weather had gotten to all of the man a lot.

  The officer hocked to clear his throat. “They don’t eat barracuda in Miami. Not when you catch the damn things in the harbor, anyhow.”

  He didn’t sound as if that was the thing bothering him, either.

  Sail asked, “You the health department?”

  The little policeman filled Sail’s eyes with light. He said, “If that was a crack—” and changed to, “Was it you yelled?”

  “Any law against a yell when you get a hook in your hand?”

  The policeman popped his light into Sail’s face again. Derision was around Sail’s blue eyes and in the warp of his lips.

  Loud music was coming from the moonlight excursion boat at the south end of the City Yacht Basin, but a barker spoiled the effect of the music, if any. Two slot machines alongside the lunch stand at Pier Six ate sailor n
ickels and chugged away.

  A hundred million dollars’ worth of yachts within a half-mile radius, the Miami publicity bureau said. Little Egyptian-silk-sail racing cutters that had cost a thousand a foot. A big three-hundred-foot Britisher, owned by Lady Something-or-other who only had officers with beards. And in-between sizes. Teak, mahogany, chromium, brass. Efficiency. Jap stewards as quiet as spooks. Blond Swede sailors. Skippers with leather faces, big hands and great calm.

  The policeman pointed his flashlight beam at the boat tied to the end of the dock. The light showed the sloping masts, the black canvas covers over the sails, the black, neat, new-looking hull. Life preservers tied to the mainstays had Sail on them in gold leaf.

  “What you call that kind of a boat?” the cop asked.

  “Chesapeake five-log bugeye,” Sail said. “Her bottom is made out of five logs drifted together with Swedish iron rods. The masts on bugeyes always rake back like that. She’s thirty-four feet long in the water. You’ll have trouble beating a bugeye for knocking around shallow water, and they’re pretty fair sea—”

  “Could it cross the ocean?”

  “She has.”

  “Yeah? My old man’s got the crazy idea he wants to go to the South Seas. He’s nuts about boats.”

  “It gets you.”

  “This one yours?”

  “Yes,” Sail said.

  “How old is it?”

  “Sixty-eight years old.”

  “T’hell it is! That’s older’n my old man. I don’t think he’d want it.”

  “She’ll take you anywhere,” Sail defended.

  “What’s she worth?”

  “Seventy-five thousand dollars,” Sail said.

  The policeman whistled. Then he laughed. He did not say anything.

  Sail said, “There are some panels in the cabin, genuine hand carvings by Samuel McIntire of Salem. Probably they were once on a clipper ship. That’s what makes her price stiff.”

  The cop did not answer. He switched off his light.

  “All I can say is you let out a hell of a funny yell when you catch a fish,” he said.