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

by Unknown

  Nick stared at the closed building. His face was dull and unexpressive. “You have no worries about Cameron,” he said. “Hydrocyanic is quick and painless.” He slumped. “There’s nothing else for me to do here, Captain. I’d rather not stay around.”

  Captain Malta looked up to the boarded windows on the second floor. Then he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I see your point. I think we’ve no further need for you at this time, Doctor. Good-night.”

  There was a single shot, sharp and clear. It came from the building.…

  “Good-night,” Nick said.

  “Well, sweetheart,” said Dr. Eddie Wing, who drove him away from the scene, “spend the night with me?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Thanks, Eddie. I’m going back to the Royal Hawaiian. I want to see about passage.”

  “East?”

  “Yes. I’m going home to the States.”

  Eddie Wing smiled grimly. “What are you going to do there, Nick?”

  “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the country,” Nick said. He smiled too. “I guess we’ve got to take a moratorium on saving lives, Eddie. First you kill the bug; then saving a life becomes easy. I’m going to offer my services to the Medical Corps. Perhaps I can help in isolating and destroying the pestis Japanicus.”

  “And the pestis Germanicus,” Eddie Wing said.

  “And the ladybug Italia,” Nick said.

  Bracelets

  Katherine Brocklebank

  KATHERINE BROCKLEBANK was unique in the history of Black Mask magazine, and a rara avis in the detective pulp fiction world in general. In the first place, she was a woman and, unless cloaked behind initials or a male pseudonym, the only one identified in the thirty-two-year history of Black Mask, even when it was under the control of a female editor, Fanny Ellsworth, from 1936 to 1940. Second, she created a female series character, Tex of the Border Patrol, who appeared in four stories late in the 1920s. Readers of Black Mask, as was true of all the detective pulps, demonstrated in their letters to the editor that they didn’t particularly care for either female protagonists or authors. While there were some exceptions in other popular magazines, fiction by or about women (except as sidekicks or girlfriends, or the occasional villain) represented a tiny fraction of the thousands of detective stories published annually in the golden age of the pulps (which was between the two World Wars).

  “Bracelets,” the first story about Tex of the Border Patrol, was published in the December 1928 issue. The other three Black Mask stories in which she starred were “White Talons” (January 1929), “The Canine Tooth” (June 1929), and “The Silver Horseshoe” (July 1929).

  Bracelets

  Katherine Brocklebank

  A tale of Tia Juana after the closing hour of the Border and all the good folks have gone home.

  TEX WATCHED FROM THE CORNERS of her eyes, watched, with a tight little pucker around her heart.

  The girl seemed so young, so incongruous in that blatantly obvious setting. She was like a flower from an old-fashioned garden and yet there she was in the ribald atmosphere of the Blue Fox—where Pancho, the shifty-eyed Mexican proprietor, rubbed his palms together and smiled his oily smile to his patrons; where Eddie swung his bamboo cane to the syncopated time of his moaning Hopa-Holi orchestra—Eddie who wore a chocolate brown suit to match his complexion, a screaming orange tie and a straw hat, who sang the latest popular ballads in a voice—untrained, crooning—as insidious as the ether-doped drinks that the silken-voiced bartenders slid across the bars of Old Town, that were now world-famous, polished to a dull red glow by the elbows of many nationalities.

  Tex shifted her eyes to the long mirror back of the bar, noting her titian wig with an inward smile of satisfaction. Strangely enough her greenish gold eyes took on a copper glint. Her wide, good-humored mouth had turned to one of hard wisdom under the clever manipulation of a vivid lip-stick. The orange rouge, slapped carelessly on either cheekbone, gave the finishing touch to a Border percentage girl, calloused, eager—pathetic.

  She eased away from the obese gentleman from Kansas City, who pawed her with maudlin intensity, and edged a little nearer to the girl. Her eyes traveled slowly over her, cognizant of the soft green silk dress; the skirt a bit longer than was smart, the floppy affair of black straw that shadowed her face. She seemed like a slender flower-stalk as she leaned against the bar, her arms draped across its stained surface, her fingers playing nervously with the string of bracelets she wore on her left wrist.

  Tex noticed particularly the girl’s hands. Narrow and white with long, thin fingers that were never still—fingers that hovered constantly over the bracelets—bracelets that caught and held Tex’s attention. There were eight of them, Chinese, of intricate design, amber and gold, carved ivory, jade. They made a peculiar clanking sound whenever the girl moved her arm.

  Tex let her gaze rove blearily along the string of heterogeneity that lined the bar: percentage girls, cheap, faded creatures with gold-filled teeth who wheedled unwilling male sightseers into buying them drinks; thrill-hunters; society matrons with a veneer of hauteur washed off by Border hooch; flappers; groggy daddies whose wives were abroad for the summer; doubtful ladies in shoddy evening clothes; crafty-eyed Mexicans; derelicts; law-dodgers.

  Slowly Tex’s eyes came back to the girl and the vain little fish-faced man who stood beside her. They had come in together and Tex knew from things she had heard—never mind how or where—that this must be “The Eel.” A clever crook was The Eel, who had so far eluded the police, who was always under suspicion but had never been caught with the goods. He claimed to be Mexican, although his intimates knew that he was half Chinese. Under an assumption of intoxication Tex studied him closely. With his oily, mud-colored skin, slick black hair and opaque slanting eyes he resembled his pseudonym, and Tex imagined she’d want to wash her hands after touching him. He looked—slimy.

  Tex lurched against the girl. “ ’Lo,” she gurgled in her slightly husky voice.

  The girl looked up at her, startled. “ ’Lo,” she answered involuntarily, without smiling.

  The Eel bent forward, giving Tex a sharp glance of mistrust, but when he saw her grinning at him vacantly he turned back to the girl and continued his low-toned conversation.

  Tex edged a little nearer, endeavoring to hear his whispered words. He stopped short and Tex felt instinctively that he was regarding her with suspicion in the bar mirror. She hooked her arm in the girl’s in a sudden burst of alcoholic familiarity and felt the girl grow rigid—with fear? Tex wondered. “Have thish one on me, dearie,” said Tex.

  The girl relaxed and smiled wanly. “Oh—thank you.” She pushed her empty glass across the bar.

  “M’boyfren’ll buy fur the crowd—won’ yuh, honey?” Tex swayed toward the inebriated obesity from Kansas City, but he was slumped over the bar, oblivious to the percentage girls’ ever consuming thirst.

  Tex shrugged. “Nev’ mind, dearie, Ah’s good sport. Ah’ll buy—mahshelf.” She opened her stringy bead bag a crack and peered blearily into its shabby depths.

  “Aw, lay off, will yuh?” The Eel scowled darkly at her, flipped a coin to the bartender, grasped the girl by the arm, and pushed her through the crowd of black-bottom maniacs on the dance floor to the door.

  Through the medium of the bar mirror Tex watched them vanish into the one main street, a street that was already growing dusk, a street that, after dark, was deserted, stealthy, dangerous—for those visitors who are foolish enough to loiter.

  Tex loitered, loitered until the music stopped abruptly with harsh discordance; until the last stream of sightseers stampeded for the Border; until the gambling halls and open-fronted cantinas closed with mock modesty and a final sly wink of lights; until night shrouded the wicked little town with brooding silence and skulking shadows.

  With a cold shiver of apprehension Tex lurched past Cæsar’s Bar and Paul’s. She felt as if eyes watched from yawning black doorways, darkened windows—eyes that were hosti
le, suspicious, sinister.

  She hugged her beaded bag under her left arm, her right hand clasped over it, and felt the reassuring hardness of the small, snub-nosed pistol, with its Maxim silencer, as it snuggled securely within the torn lining.

  She turned into the dimly lighted entrance of the San Francisco Cantina and stumbled up the cheaply carpeted stairs to her room. She closed the door with a bang and hiccoughed as she switched on the light. From under lowered lids she made a hasty survey of the small, bare room, then flung herself full-length on the bed, her purse held tightly across her breast.

  One hour crawled by on furtive, dragging feet. Two. And still Tex lay on her springless wooden bed, feigning drunken slumber.

  A slight breeze riffled in through the window stirring the sagging lace curtain to shake some of its dust in Tex’s nose. She suppressed a sneeze and turned it into a snore with a choked sort of snort on the end of it.

  A little longer she listened to the swishing of the curtain as it flapped wearily in and out of the window. Then she thought she heard another sound. A shuffling sound, soft, guarded, muffled.

  Slowly she sat up, swinging her feet quietly over the edge of the bed and eased them to the carpetless floor. Silently she crept across the room to the door and paused, tensing, listening, her bead bag clutched in her right hand.

  At first there was nothing—just silence—then a faint hissing sound. Tex leaned nearer to the crack and a few whispered words drifted in to her.

  “But, Señor Jefe, she ees wan of my percentage girls. Mucho good wan, too. You make wan beeg mistake. She ees not what you t’ink.” The voice was Pancho’s—Pancho of the Blue Fox.

  “Well, I ain’t takin’ no chances. She talks like that Texan female dick.… Anyway—we’ll leave him for her.”

  In her startled surprise Tex lost the rest of the sentence. She gripped the bead bag more tightly. Damn that Texas drawl of hers! For a second she wished she had heeded her chief’s warning and brought Bobbie with her. Then she laughed softly, a shaky little laugh. She’d been in tight corners before since she’d entered the secret service four years ago, and through her quick wit and clear reasoning she had always managed to extricate herself—with honors—and part of the trapped underworld. That was why the chief had chosen her to unravel the skein of mystery that tangled around the strange death of Melville Hewett, a wealthy San Francisco merchant, and the disappearance of his son, Arthur. The Eel had been seen coming out of Hewett’s home the night before the murder.

  Tex was suddenly aware of a curious absence of sound. She waited a moment, holding her breath, her left hand on the door-knob. Then with a swift, cat-like movement, she pulled the door toward her. It opened abruptly, as if someone were pushing against it. She flashed her hand inside her bag, her fingers closing around the pistol, but suddenly recoiled with a stifled cry as a man’s body plunged inward and fell forward on his face.

  There was something peculiar about his swollen, twisted limbs. Something that vaguely reminded Tex of another man. Who was it? Then in a flash she knew. Melville Hewett had looked that same way.

  With a revulsion of feeling toward touching anything lifeless, that she had never been able to overcome, she turned the man on his back.

  Staring up at her with glassy eyes, with the contorted features of one who has died in agony, was Bobbie; Bobbie, who was the youngest member of the department and whom the chief had evidently sent to protect her.

  Tex straightened, her eyes clouded with unexpected tears, and her heart felt sick. Bobbie was such a youngster. So straight and clean. Damn them! Her hot Texan blood began to boil. She’d get them for this!

  She leaned over him again, examining him more closely, pondering. There were no marks of violence. No blood. Then the glint of a green circlet on his left wrist caught her eye. The bracelet was of jade, carved, Chinese. Attached to it by a slender gold chain was a small folded paper. Tex stiffened, for instinctively she knew it was a message for her. She spread the paper out and read the illiterate, scribbled words—Ull git yuse next if u dont lay off. At the end, instead of the signature, was a green seal. Tex scrutinized it intently, her eyes narrowing as she turned the paper around. The seal evolved into a bracelet as she examined it. A bracelet with the head of a snake and the tail of a fish. She smiled, a grim twisting of her painted lips. The Eel was an egomaniac. He couldn’t resist the temptation of becoming his own press agent.

  A low, husky sound issued from the slim, round throat of Tex; a cry of comprehension, relentless rage, warning.

  Through the crooked back streets of Old Town, Tex slid cautiously, like some stalking shadow, through streets that seemed to be winding, dirt-smeared menaces leading into oblivion.

  She was following her hunch. A hunch that beckoned her to Pancho’s crumbling adobe that crouched, like some hunted animal in the treacherous sands of the desert, one mile south of Tia Juana.

  From time to time she glanced nervously over her shoulder. Silence trailed back of her—heavy, oppressive. And before her? Nameless peril. A little demon of fear clutched at her heart, squeezing it until she could hardly breathe. A peculiar tingling sensation ran along her arms and twitched the ends of her fingers. She knew the symptoms. She had had the same feeling when she was about to take off for the five-foot hurdles back in Texas. A breathless sort of feeling. A feeling that a hunter must have just before the kill.

  Pancho’s adobe loomed unexpectedly before her, a darker shadow in the surrounding gloom. It was long, low and narrow. A wide chimney of rotting stones in the back; two thick, weather-scarred doors of solid wood in front; a narrow, deep-set window near the slanting mud roof at either end. No sound came from the adobe and no light penetrated the thick wooden openings.

  Tex crept up to the door nearer her and gently pushed against it. It gave silently under her weight. Quickly, quietly she stepped into the long, low-ceilinged room into which it directly opened, her bead bag hugged under her left arm. She blinked at the sudden light although it was only a feeble flicker from three tallow candles that hung in a rusty iron chandelier suspended from a single wooden beam that ran the length of the room.

  Swiftly she took in her surroundings. In a shrouded corner was a cot with something moaning under a pair of soiled blankets. Near it drooped the girl with the bracelets, sobbing softly in a suppressed sort of hopelessness.

  Tex closed the door quietly and advanced toward the cot.

  At the slight sound of her steps the girl looked up, her eyes widening in terror, her narrow white hands flying to her mouth to stifle the cry that sprang to her lips, the bracelets crowding together, clicking, clanking. Then the fear slowly faded from the girl’s face. “Oh, it’s—you,” she said dully.

  Tex nodded and grinned. “Sure.” She slid a little nearer and stared down at the white face on the pillow. “Arthur Hewett,” she whispered. “Doped and kept doped for days,” she added to herself.

  At that the girl seemed to waken as from heavy stupor. “How did you know? Who are you?” She sprang up facing Tex.

  Tex thought rapidly. She must move cautiously—and—quickly. The girl was suspicious, yet Tex felt that through her she would gain the key to the mystery.

  “He looks like his pitcher, don’t he?” Tex answered the first question, ignoring the second. She lolled against the burnt brick wall, swinging her bag back and forth, searching furtively the other three corners of the room. “Gotter swig er hooch round this heah dump?” she finally asked, turning back to the girl.

  The girl shook her head, slumping back into the chair, her long fingers playing nervously with her bracelets.

  “Now, ain’t that too bad?” murmured Tex, watching her from under lowered lids. “My, ain’t them bracelets pretty?” She stretched an experimental hand toward the girl’s left wrist.

  The girl drew back sharply, alarm in her shadowed eyes, her fingers curling protectively around the eight circlets.

  Tex assumed a sullen tone. “Ah—what’d’yuh take me fur? A cheap di
p?” She glanced toward the two doors. “Hell! Ah’d give mah best gold inlay fur a shot er hooch.”

  A pale little smile hovered around the girl’s lips. “I’m sorry—but there isn’t any here—only—” She chopped her sentence off abruptly with a little gasp of fright.

  “Only what?” prodded Tex quietly, successfully cloaking her eagerness. “If thar’s anything that’ll take the place—er hooch—hand it ovah, honey, ’cause Ah’m lower than a snake’s hips.”

  “Snakes!” whispered the girl in deadly fear, and Tex leaned toward her suddenly.

  “Gawd! Thar ain’t no snakes—heah?” Under the pretense of dismay she studied the girl intently. Snakes? The deaths of Hewett and Bobbie strangely resembled the deadly bites of rattlers. The swollen limbs; the discolored flesh; the almost invisible twin red marks on the left wrists. And yet there had been no snakes.

  The girl recovered herself and regarded Tex a little doubtfully. “No—no—of course not.” She turned to soothe the moaning man with gently caressing hands, the bracelets huddling down toward her slender hand. She turned back to Tex. “How did you know of this place?” she demanded unexpectedly, a sharp note in her usually low tones.

  Tex didn’t answer at once. Instead she hitched a little nearer to the bed, keeping her back to the wall, facing the two doors. “Listen, honey,” she murmured at last, “Ah come heah to help you.” A crooning note slid into her throaty voice and she glanced significantly toward the wasted form of Arthur Hewett.

  The girl’s eyes followed hers and returned, poignant pain suffusing their shadowed depths. She gazed up at Tex, hesitating, seeming to consider.

  And Tex waited, outwardly calm, in no hurry. Inwardly at a high-pitched, nervous tension, her ears cocked for any outside disturbance, her eyes darting to the doors, the windows, around the room, back to the girl and the moaning man. If, as she surmised, the girl was weak, guarding some secret, through love—or fear—she would break under Tex’s soft persuasion.