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

by Unknown

  T. McGuirk looked calmly. He made no move to touch the stone.

  “You got a glass?” he demanded. “Me eyes ain’t so wery good.”

  The pawnbroker exchanged another glance with the saturnine Mr. Delancy. Then, reluctantly, he produced a magnifying glass from his pocket. T. McGuirk fitted it to his eye and with the air of a connoisseur bent forward to examine the diamond still lying untouched on its velvet background. After a moment he straightened. His glance was one of gentle reproof.

  “I wanta buy a real diamond,” he stated patiently. “Ain’t you got a real diamond worth about four thousan’ bucks?”

  The calm naming of this amount softened the pawnbroker’s disappointment at finding his customer could not be fooled.

  “I got it absolutely what you want,” he stated confidently. “Wait a minute—you could pick out the exact stone.”

  He removed his first offering; and returning, laid six unset diamonds on the square of velvet beneath T. McGuirk’s critical eyes. There was no doubt of the genuineness of these stones; Mr. Delancy’s immediate alertness was contributory evidence. He hitched his chair forward slightly, his eyes glued to the square of velvet with the six gems sparkling upon it. Quite evidently, though the visitor was not under suspicion, it was not part of Mr. Gluckstein’s plan to have anything go amiss. The pawnbroker displayed his wares carelessly; but his confederate, from the shadows, watched T. McGuirk like a hawk.

  “You couldn’t find anything better at the price in America,” declared Mr. Gluckstein emphatically. “Pick it out, the one your lady friend would like.”

  T. McGuirk sat with elbows on the table, staring at the six diamonds. He picked one up, gingerly, between thumb and forefinger. Mr. Delancy’s gaze unwaveringly followed the stone as T. McGuirk raised it nearer his eyes.

  “How much for this here one?”

  He laid it back among the other five. Mr. Delancy breathed again and relaxed slightly.

  “Four thousand dollars you could have it for,” said the pawnbroker deprecatingly. “An’ if it ain’t worth six, s’elp me.”

  T. McGuirk’s hands went suddenly into the side pockets of his ragged overcoat. Mr. Delancy leaned forward again. He saw quite plainly the six diamonds all lying on the black velvet. T. McGuirk’s hands came back to the table. They held a tiny bag of tobacco, two matches and cigarette papers. Deftly he began rolling a cigarette.

  “Four thousan’? Wery good. An’ how much is this here one?” T. McGuirk touched another of the stones with the tip of his little finger. “Ain’t this here a canary diamond?”

  Mr. Gluckstein, at the question, passed around to his customer’s left. For one brief instant he obstructed Mr. Delancy’s view of the table. T. McGuirk was lighting his cigarette carefully, his hands cupping the flame.

  And then, after an interval of two seconds, to Mr. Delancy’s horrified gaze the square of black velvet presented only five diamonds! He counted them in a daze—five, not six as there should have been! Mr. Delancy sprang to his feet with an oath.

  “Grab him, Ike! He’s got one of the sparklers!”

  Mr. Gluckstein’s glance swung instantly to the velvet. He also could count only five diamonds. T. McGuirk had finished lighting his cigarette; he flicked away the match.

  Quick as Mr. Delancy was to leap forward, the pawnbroker was quicker. He seized T. McGuirk by the collar unceremoniously, jerking him from his seat, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat.

  The cigarette tumbled from T. McGuirk’s lips and fell unheeded to the floor; on the table, by the square of velvet with its five diamonds, lay his cigarette papers, a match, and the tiny bag of tobacco.

  When Mr. Gluckstein’s strength gave out from shaking his victim, he abruptly desisted. T. McGuirk’s feet found the floor. He stood quivering, shrinking within his rags and mumbling vehemently.

  Mr. Delancy’s shock of surprise and alarm had now abated.

  “Nothin’ to get excited over, Ike. The little shrimp can’t get away.”

  “I don’t w-want to get away,” T. McGuirk chattered. “What you doin’ that to me for? How dare you do that to me for nothin’?”

  “Shut up,” ordered Mr. Delancy. “Ike, how many sparklers was there? Am I seein’ things? I saw six.”

  “Six,” verified Mr. Gluckstein briefly. “The Lady Vernon jewels we bought from Lefty.”

  Mr. Delancy nodded.

  “Come on, you.” This to T. McGuirk. “Hand it over or I’ll break every bone in your damn little body.”

  “Not so loud, Pete.”

  Mr. Gluckstein had a very wholesome desire to avoid any uproar. He prided himself on the fact that never once had the police had occasion to invade his premises because of interior disturbance.

  Mr. Delancy modified his tones.

  “Come on, you—hand it over. You can’t get away with that stuff here.”

  T. McGuirk suddenly began to snivel.

  “H-hand w-what over?”

  “The rock—the sparkler. There was six—now there’s five.”

  “I ain’t got no sparkler,” declared T. McGuirk sullenly. “I ain’t seen no sparkler ’cept them there what’s on the table.”

  “You could search him, Pete,” suggested Mr. Gluckstein hopefully.

  He seemed a little confused, anxious to leave the initiative to his companion.

  “Look out! Maybe he’s got a gun!”

  T. McGuirk’s hand had gone to his pocket.

  “I ain’t,” he asserted stoutly. “I’m a peaceable man—I don’t never use no rewolwer.”

  His empty hands went up obediently at Mr. Delancy’s command. Quite evidently he spoke the truth, for after a moment Mr. Delancy backed away again, surveying him from a distance.

  “Search him good, Pete. You could find it. Right away we get excited—that ain’t sensible.”

  After another peremptory but futile demand for the missing diamond, Mr. Delancy began searching the person of T. McGuirk. It was too slow a process.

  “Take ’em off,” he commanded.

  T. McGuirk obediently stripped. When he was denuded of every vestige of apparel, Mr. Delancy and the pawnbroker avidly pawed over the pile of rags. Their search was fruitless. The missing diamond was not to be found.

  “Where’s his four thousan’ bucks?” Mr. Delancy demanded.

  He and the pawnbroker turned accusingly on their prisoner. T. McGuirk, shivering in his nudity, flushed with embarrassment.

  “I ain’t got no money with me,” he explained. “Lefty’s holdin’ it. He was comin’ here later to buy the diamond I picked out.”

  This remark, which T. McGuirk made quite on the spur of the moment, evidently gave Mr. Gluckstein considerable food for thought. His respect for Lefty Lannigan was great, his fear even greater. And he well remembered the gunman’s ire at a little unpleasantness over these same Lady Vernon jewels. There was evidently more to this affair than Mr. Gluckstein had at first supposed. He was quite at a loss to explain it; but whatever it was, Lefty Lannigan must not be involved.

  T. McGuirk, still shivering, remarked indignantly:

  “Yous is wery, wery wrong, a-treatin’ me this way. Gimme my clothes.”

  He began dressing, mumbling to himself.

  “I’m a-gonna tell Lefty how yous is a-treatin’ me over nothin’.”

  Mr. Delancy passed a hand over his blue chin reflectively. The situation was too complicated for him.

  “You better put them other sparklers back,” he cautioned, waving his hand at the five diamonds on the table. “We might lose another if we ain’t careful.”

  The pawnbroker mechanically replaced them in the safe.

  T. McGuirk was still dressing, some distance from the table, when Mr. Delancy suddenly thought of the little tobacco bag lying there. He examined it eagerly, but it yielded nothing but tobacco.

  “Maybe the diamond got knocked on the floor,” suggested T. McGuirk hopefully. “But I didn’t see none, only them five.”

  The pawnbroker was
already on his knees, searching about with a pocket flashlight. Mr. Delancy joined him. T. McGuirk, now completely dressed, sat down and watched the proceedings with interest.

  For fifteen minutes the search went on. The room was ransacked thoroughly. Mr. Gluckstein verified his count of the diamonds in the safe. He searched his own pockets, and those of Mr. Delancy. The result was always the same. There had been six of Lady Vernon’s diamonds brought in by Lefty Lannigan and purchased from him by Mr. Gluckstein—but now there were only five.

  T. McGuirk sat meekly watching. On the floor near the table leg lay the cigarette he had rolled. He picked it up. But before he had time even to reach for a match, Mr. Delancy seized the cigarette with a cry of triumph.

  “Here’s where he put that sparkler, Ike! We’re fools!”

  The pawnbroker hastened to his side as he tore the little cylinder apart ruthlessly. There was nothing but tobacco within it.

  T. McGuirk’s glance was rebuking.

  “I ain’t seen no sparkler, I’m telling you. Yous is wery wrong, accusin’ me this way.”

  The exasperated Mr. Delancy seized him by the collar; but this time T. McGuirk yelped shrilly.

  “You take your hands off’n me. S’elp me, I’ll yell for the cops. An’ when I get ’em in here I’ll tell ’em all about everything. I can’t help it if yous is so careless with Lady Wernon’s diamonds.”

  The pawnbroker shuddered. Mr. Delancy released his victim, and remarked hopelessly:

  “Get him out of here, Ike, before I kill him. He’ll land the bulls on us sure.”

  “I wanta go,” T. McGuirk asserted. “Lefty’s waitin’ for me anyhow. I don’t wanta buy no diamonds off’n you.”

  He cast about for his hat, but Mr. Gluckstein confronted him.

  “If we let you go now you could shut your mouth about this? You could get out of here an’ stay out an’ right away forget you were ever in here?”

  “Wery good idea,” assented T. McGuirk readily. “I never seen no sparklers in here. I never heard of no Lady Wernon. Just lemme out. I deman’ to be let go!”

  Half a minute later, with a push from Mr. Delancy that propelled him headlong down the steps into the darkness of the alley, T. McGuirk made his exit.

  Lefty Lannigan, with a curiosity that would not let him rest, chanced to be loitering at the corner waiting for his friend’s appearance. T. McGuirk came shuffling along, still mumbling vehemently to himself.

  “Hello, Timothy. You didn’t get killed?”

  T. McGuirk stopped.

  “Did you get the diamond, Timothy?”

  There was a shade of irony in Mr. Lannigan’s tone.

  “Sure I got it. Lady Wernon’s—the biggest one. Wery easy job—wery easy, in-deed.”

  Mr. Lannigan stared, incredulous.

  “How’d you get it? Show it up.”

  But T. McGuirk shook his head.

  “Not here. Come on—let’s eat.”

  In the semi-private alcove of a cheap Chinese restaurant off the Bowery, T. McGuirk faced his burly friend over the marble table.

  “I was rollin’ a cigarette—see?”

  He suited the action to the word, rolling the little cylinder deftly and moistening it with his tongue. Then, with a bland smile, he removed a pivot tooth from his upper jaw. He held it out triumphantly. It was a realistically yellow false tooth with a gold top and a pivot sticking up. T. McGuirk turned it over in his palm. The back of the tooth was hollowed out and filled up with wax. And imbedded in the wax lay the missing diamond.

  “You gets the sparkler on your tongue,” T. McGuirk explained. “An’ the tongue puts it in the tooth. It’s wery easy—wery easy in-deed. All you needs for a job like that is system. System an’ brains, an’ no rewolwer.”

  Wait for Me

  Steve Fisher

  STEPHEN (GOULD) FISHER (1912–1980) served in the U.S. Navy for four years from the age of sixteen, then settled in New York City to write full-time, becoming one of the most prolific and successful authors of his time, with hundreds of stories sold to both the pulps and the slicks, twenty novels, and more than one hundred scripts for motion pictures and television series.

  His classic noir novel I Wake Up Screaming (1940) was his breakthrough when it was made into what is generally regarded as Hollywood’s first film noir. The 1941 movie starred Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, and Laird Cregar; it was remade in 1953 as Vicki, with Jeanne Crain, Elliott Reid, Jean Peters, and Richard Boone. Fisher was the screenwriter for numerous mystery films in the 1940s, including the uncharacteristically dark final film in the popular Thin Man series, Song of the Thin Man (1947), Johnny Angel (1945, with George Raft, based on a Charles G. Booth novel, Mr. Angel Comes Aboard), Lady in the Lake (1947, based on Raymond Chandler’s novel), I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948, based on a Cornell Woolrich story), Berlin Correspondent (1942, an anti-Nazi thriller), and Dead Reckoning (1947), a classic crime tale starring Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott. His early navy background lent authenticity to such war film screenplays as Destination Tokyo (1943, starring Cary Grant) and the aircraft carrier film Flat Top (1952); his other great war movie is To the Shores of Tripoli (1942).

  “Wait for Me” was published in the May 1938 issue.

  Wait for Me

  Steve Fisher

  A murdered spy evokes Death in Shanghai.

  HER NAME WAS ANNA, AND SHE WAS beautiful, with golden blond hair that came to her shoulders and turned under at the ends, and a face like an angel, soft and aglow with color; gray-green eyes, and the slim traces of sunlight that were eyebrows.

  She knelt there in the Shanghai street, and bowed her head, so that her hair fell a little forward, and like that, kneeling, there was both grace and divinity in her.

  The sunset drifted across her red jacket and the shadow of her slim figure fell across the cobblestone street, causing even the fleeing Chinese to stop and turn and look, though they did not pause long. Now and again a white man stopped, and glanced at her, then went on when he recognized that she was Russian.

  Anna leaned down and kissed the bleeding girl, kissed her cooling cheeks, and said softly:

  “We will have no more sailors together, eh, Olga? Drink no more vodka.” She smiled faintly, and shrugged, for Olga was gone, like yesterday’s breath. Gone, Anna thought, quite fortunately and painlessly. A merciful stray bullet—and who to tell if Jap or Chinese?—had ended her troubles. But Anna, living, must go on.

  She looked around, looked through the streets for the man who had been following her, but she did not see him, and by now had forgotten the corpse of the girl.

  She rose, and moved on, gracefully, her feet accustomed to the cobblestones, her face and eyes dry. She paused at each corner and looked up and down the street. Mostly she was looking for the man who had followed her from her apartment. She did not know who he was. He was wearing a coat with its collar turned up around his face, a white face with bleak, desperate eyes. He had called after her and she had run, losing herself in the fleeing crowd. She was terrified. Everything terrified her.

  Since the evacuation order had come through to send all foreign white women to Hong Kong, and from there to their own countries, Anna felt that her time to die would come at any moment.

  There was no escape for Russian exiles. There was nowhere they could run to get away from war. No passports would be issued to them; no country wanted them. Russian women were at the mercy of the mob, of the armies, of every band of men that came along. The evacuation order clearing white women had come two hours ago; in another sixteen hours huge transports would sail away with all those women, except the Russians.…

  Ah, the Russians. Anna laughed into the clatter of the frightened street; and then she clenched her teeth and fled on, shadows and torch-light beating against her running figure. It was quieter in the International settlement. She did not slacken her pace, though she was breathing harder.

  When she came to the hotel she swept inside the doors, and in th
at instant she saw the man who had been following her, the man whose coat collar was turned up. She saw him running past, and, not waiting to see if he would miss her, then stop and come back, she went to the desk.

  “I wish to see Mrs. Turner.”

  The clerk bowed. “You may call her on the house phone, madam.”

  Anna moved nervously to the house phone and picked it up. When Rita Turner’s silky voice came on the wire, Anna said: “I have a message from your husband. It is very important and most confidential.”

  Except in highly excitable moments Anna could speak English without an accent, for her finishing school had been a nightclub called the Navy Sport Palace, which was little more than third rate, and located on the Bund. There she had learned all the American and English and French slang; and she had learned other things too: how to darken her eyes, and redden her mouth, and wink her eye, and toss her head; how to drink without becoming drunk; how to muffle her sobs with laughter; the art of light love with a deep touch.

  Rita Turner said nervously: “Please come up.”

  Anna moved gracefully into the elevator. She sighed as the doors slid quietly closed. Though she had been too young to remember Moscow, she thought it might be like this; the comfort and ease the White Russians had known; the old lost life about which she had heard her parents talk.

  When she arrived on the fourth floor she walked down the heavily padded hall and stopped in front of the room number Rita Turner had given her. She knocked, and the door was immediately opened.

  A tall, dark girl, her hair in a heavy roll on her neck, her skin pale, and her eyes bright and black and vivid, stood there, then stepped back. Anna walked in.

  It was a beautiful apartment. A radio tuned to Hong Kong was playing “The Lady Is a Tramp”; from the window there was a magnificent scene of fire sweeping across the eastern section of Shanghai, and it was so vivid Anna almost thought she could hear the shrill despair of the screams beneath the flame.

  The rug in the room was Oriental, the furniture quietly rich. Three bags lay open, light plane baggage, brown and smart and new. They were half packed. Women’s clothes were strewn everywhere.