Cheyney Complete Works of Peter Cheyney. Illustrated

Lemmy Caution Books, Slim Callaghan Books, Dark Novels, Short Fiction
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-88003-038-0
Verlag: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 7837 Seiten

Peter Cheyney is perhaps best known for his short stories and novels about agent/detective Lemmy Caution. Caution was first portrayed as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, and in later stories as a private detective. Another popular creation was the private detective Slim Callaghan who also appeared in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. He was constructed as a British response to the more hardboiled detectives of American fiction such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. A meticulous researcher, Cheyney kept a massive set of files on criminal activity in London, but these were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941; he however, soon began to replace his collection of clippings. He dictated his work. Typically he would 'act out' his stories for his secretary, Miss Sprauge, who would copy them down in shorthand and type them up later... Contents: Lemmy Caution Books This Man Is Dangerous Poison Ivy Dames Don't Care Can Ladies Kill? Don't Get Me Wrong You'd Be Surprised Your Deal, My Lovely Never A Dull Moment You Can Always Duck Slim Callaghan Books The Urgent Hangman Dangerous Curves You Can't Keep The Change It Couldn't Matter Less Sorry You've Been Troubled Calling Mr. Callaghan Dark Novels Dark Duet The Stars Are Dark The Dark Street Dark Hero Dark Bahama Lost Novels Death Chair The Gold Kimono The Sign On The Roof The Vengeance Of Hop Fi Other Novels Ladies Won't Wait The Curiosity Of Etienne Macgregor The Deadly Fresco Dressed To Kill Short Fiction The Alonzo Mactavish Omnibus Lemmy Caution Stories Slim Callaghan Stories Other Stories 

Reginald Evelyn Peter Southouse-Cheyney (22 February 1896 - 26 June 1951), known as Peter Cheyney, was a British crime fiction writer who flourished between 1936 and 1951.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cheyney, Peter

Leseproben

I. THE PICK-UP

EVEN Miranda Van Zelden couldn't spoil the pipe-dream I had on the corner of Piccadilly and Haymarket.

It was one of those nights. You know what I mean. Everything was O.K., and you feelin' that you're a go-getter and that you got 'em all beat to the game. I felt on top of the world an' I don't often get that way.

Take a look at me. My name's Lemmy Caution by rights but I got so many aliases that sometimes I don't know if I'm John Doe or it's Thursday. In Chicago the place that smart guys call Chi just so's you'll know they've read a detective book written by some punk who always says he nearly got shot by one of Capone's cannoneers but didn't quite make the grade they used to call me "Two-Time" because they said it always took two slugs to stop me, an' in the other place where coppers go funny colours when they think of me they call me Toledo.

I'm tellin' you I'm a big-shot an' if you don't believe me just take a look at any dump where they got a police record and a finger-printin' apparatus an' you're mine for keeps.

All of which is very fine but it don't get you no place an' it don't do anything about that smart jane Miranda Van Zelden who is a baby who has caused me a whole lot of trouble an' I don't mean maybe.

But Haymarket was lookin' fine to me. You see I ain't never been in London any before an' I'm tickled the way I made it gettin' here. Somebody out in New York was tellin' me that these English coppers is so smart that they even arrest each other for practice; they told me that I got as much chance of bustin' the passport check-up as a nice blonde had of stayin' that way in Ma Licovat's love parlour at Greek Alley an' Twelfth... well, they was wrong.

I made it. I slipped over via Marseilles where some old punk who takes a keen pride in twicin' Customs' guys sold me a first-class American passport for four hundred dollars with a real guy's name on it an' a picture that looked like me after I'd had a smack in the puss an' everything complete.

I'm walking down Haymarket an' it's eleven o'clock, an' I've had a swell dinner an' I am wearing a tuxedo an' a black fedora. If you must know more then I'm goin' to tell you that I weigh two hundred pounds an' I got that sorta mug that dames fall for in a big way because it is a relief from the guys in the Russian ballet. I have also got brains an' some girl in Toledo nearly drunk herself to cinders on bad hooch because I gave her the air, which, they musta told you, means sex-appeal, so now you know.

I said it was a nice night. I was meanderin' down Haymarket just thinking things over quietly to myself, because I do not want you to think that I am a guy who takes a whole lot of chances that ain't indicated. This Miranda Van Zelden business wasn't no baby's play-time hour I'm tellin' you, an' I knew that there was one or two guys would iron me out just as soon as take a look at me if they had known what the real schedule was.

Maybe you folks have heard of the snatch racket. You pinch some guy or some dame, or maybe a kid they gotta be classy of course, an' you just take 'em away to some hideout until their folks cough up plenty dough. Some of the nicest guys I ever knew was in the snatch racket. It's a classy game an' pays if the Feds don't get their hooks on you.

Which brings me back to where I was just before I turned off, don't it. Feds.... Special Agents of the Federal Department of Justice G men the little fellers who can do no wrong. Well, I sorta had an idea that one of these palookas was on the boat comin' over from Marseilles... still, I guess we can come back to G men a little later on.

Presenting Miranda Van Zelden glorifying pulchritude. Ladies an' gentlemen give the little girl a hand. Now you know each other I'll wise you up about Miranda. This dame is an heiress to about seventeen million dollars does it make you gasp some? She is also as wild as they make 'em, an' she is about the swellest looker that ever a tired business man dreamt about while he was bein' kept late at the office.

The first time I ever spoke to Miranda was at the Honeysuckle an' Jasmine Inn which is out on the main Toledo Road. This was the night when Frenchy Squills decides that he will have a little argument with the Lacassar mob that is runnin' the dump. You can take it from me that the amount of jasmine an' honeysuckle operatin' that night would have stuck in your eye. It mighta been called Lead Alley because the amount of hot iron that is flyin' about that Inn is nobody's business.

It was about one o'clock in the morning an' I am leanin' up against one of the ornamental pillars in the dance room, waitin' for something nice an' hot to pop. I have also got an eyeful of Miranda who is dancin' with some gorilla of Lacassar's she was interested in mobsters at that time an' I am thinkin' that Miranda is easy to look at. She is lithe like a panther with a figure that could bust up a diamond wedding an' she dances like a fairy. I was just thinkin' that it was durn silly for a swell dame like she was to go hangin' around that sorta place just for the sake of gettin' a thrill outa rubbin' shoulders with a lot of punk that wasn't fit to clean her car sump.

Before I go any further I guess I'd better wise you up as to what the position was in Toledo with these boys. What I was doing up there is just nobody's business. I sorta go around looking for trouble any time there's anything good hanging on the end of it, and I'd gone there from Oklahoma where things was gettin' a bit hot for me at that time, also I'd heard about Miranda.

Nobody wasn't quite certain as to who was chasing who. Mr. Roosevelt, President of the United States, and a guy called J. Edgar Hoover, of the U.S. Department of Justice, had said they was goin' to run mobsters out of America. The Police Department heard 'em and said so too. But at this time whether the mobsters was chasing the police or the other way round nobody knew by rights. Repeal never stopped a thing. There was more scull-duggery an' a bigger rake-off after repeal than there ever was before.

Frenchy Squills reckoned that he was running Toledo. He was a king high bootlegger, high jacker, racketeer, an' what will you, in those parts up to the time Tony Lacassar showed up. Tony blew out of Chicago after some argument in a garage where four coppers, three G men and a travelling salesman who was so drunk that he thought he was in Oshkosh, all got filled up so full of lead that they just didn't know.

Tony got the tip to push out for a bit, so he went up to Toledo, and he took up there with him the finest bundle of go-getters that was ever in a racket. I've seen some bad guys but the Lacassar mob was just pure poison.

Tony starts to muscle in, an' when he muscles in on a dump he don't mean maybe. Frenchy tries to put up a show but after they find one of his muscle men nailed up on a tree near Maumee Bay with 4-inch nails an' a note sending Tony's kind regards to Frenchy stuck in his mouth, it looks as if Frenchy is beat to the game.

There's a meeting an' a sorta truce is arranged. Things are quiet for a bit an' even the fact that Frenchy is now only running one dump the Honeysuckle an' Jasmine Inn which is a roadhouse where anything you like can happen an' did don't satisfy Tony. He has to have that. An' it looks like he figures to take the place over on the night I'm telling you about.

I was just interested. I thought maybe when these guys was finished bumping each other off, somethin' might come my way, and I'm a patient sorta cuss. I got medals for waiting for all sorta things dough, dames, district attorneys and what have you and I was interested in something else. I knew darned well that Lacassar wasn't really the big shot. I always had a hunch that there was some guy behind Lacassar, who was just a big mouth stuck up to hide the real feller. I also had an idea that this real guy is a feller called Siegella, who is really a big guy, an' is just poison. The things that this feller Siegella had done was just nobody's business.

I was telling you, it was about one o'clock in the mornin', an' I'm leaning up against a pillar watching Miranda doing her stuff with Yonnie Malas, who is Lacassar's star machine gun man. This guy Malas is good-looking after the manner of wops and he can certainly dance. So can Miranda. I tell you that pair was good, but it sorta got me somewhere under the belt to see a nice piece of goods like Miranda, who was anyway American, dancing with a cheap yegg like Yonnie.

It was a hot night one of them nights when every time you try to breathe you wonder where you're gonna get the air from. My collar was beginning to wilt. I had the sorta feelin' that I wished it would rain or somethin' just to clean things up a bit. The dance room was big, but it was hot. Dance rooms always are hot. The whole place was full of toughs, city fakers, play boys, "come-on" girls, an' all the rest of the hoodlums that you get round a place like that. I reckon about thirty per cent of the guys in that place had got a shooting iron stuck on their body somewhere or other an' knew how to use it.

After a bit I walked over to the bar at the end of the room an' ordered myself a high-ball.

"Nice place you've got here!" I says to the bar-tender.

"Oh, yeah!" he says, "ain't you original? So what?"

"Say, listen," I says to him, "there ain't no need to get that way. I was just passing the time of day, you know."

"That's O.K. by me," he says. "Passing the time of day don't...