The Tag Murders E-Book

Carroll John Daly

• Herausgeber: Black Mask
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Race Williams thought he had seen it all until he came face to face with the mystery of The Tag Murderer: the killer who left metal emblems pinned to each of his victims' corpses. Solving the case is only made more complicated when The Flame, Race's femme fatale, becomes entangled in the mystery: what's her role? And is Race in her crosshairs too? One of the best adventures in the Race Williams series. Story #20 in the Race Williams series. Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the most popular fiction characters of the pulps, and the direct inspiration for Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.

Leseprobe

The Tag Murders

Race Williams book #20

A Black Mask Classic

by

Carroll John Daly

Black Mask

Copyright Information

© 2017 Steeger Properties, LLC. Published by arrangement with Steeger Properties, LLC, agent for the Estate of Carroll John Daly.

Publication History:

“The Tag Murders” originally appeared in the March–June, 1929 issues of Black Mask magazine.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

“Race Williams” is a trademark of the Estate of Carroll John Daly. “Black Mask” is a trademark of Steeger Properties, LLC, and registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The Tag Murders

Chapter 1

A Strange Introduction

The Evening Blade

That the police are helpless to cope with this latest “crime wave” may be a nerve-racked, panicky statement. But that they have not met the situation is undoubtedly a fact which the uncompleted crime records of the past few months will show.

Organized crime may be scoffed at in the district attorney’s office. It may be laughed down by the police department. But it cannot be denied that murder, robbery, blackmail, and even arson have been perpetrated under such similar conditions and circumstances as to make it apparent to the most “level-headed citizen” that some directing hand or hands are behind the recent and prolonged series of outrages that have struck terror to our city.

It may be “scatter brained” or even “childish”—as our contemporaries have hinted—to connect up small, round, metal tags with any deeply-rooted and well-organized industry of crime. That a “master mind,” with the single purpose of purloining from prosperous citizens the fruits of their labor, would leave behind him such “silly” indications of scorn and defiance of the police has been ridiculed. “Childish” that? Perhaps, if these metal indications of “jobs” all perpetrated by the same gang did not serve some other purpose. But each tag carries a message of fear—not only to the law-abiding and long-suffering citizen, but to the denizens of the underworld as well.

Five underworld characters—namely: two gang leaders, two ex-convicts, and one nationally known counterfeiter—have been done to death on the streets of the lower city. And upon the person of each, or in close proximity to the body, was found one of these strange metal tags. “Childish” this? “Scatter brained” this? Scorn and defiance to the police? Or was it something else? Was it as a warning to others that these men died?

It has taken this latest outrage—the robbery at twelve o’clock noon of Burton’s Jewelry Store on Fifth Avenue, and the brutal killing of a clerk—to stir our city to real action. Gregory Ford and his nationally known detective agency have been retained by the Consolidated Association of Merchants of New York City.

Interviewed, Gregory Ford gave out a bit of information that will be as interesting to the public as it was surprising and startling to this newspaper. Race Williams—gun-toting and gun-using, self-styled “private investigator,” who has on numerous occasions figured in sensational newspaper stories—is to be hired by the Ford Agency.

The New York Evening Blade has more than once condemned the district attorney for not watching more closely, and stopping with drastic measures the activities of this so called detective—Race Williams. But here is a matter that calls, perhaps, to a fight of fire with fire—and by that we begrudgingly admit that we mean “gun-fire.”

The Evening Blade cannot agree with the ethics of Mr. Race Williams. We cannot commend to the public his past activities in the many cases he has handled. But we can, and do, admit that no matter what our opinion may be, Race Williams has gotten results. In plain words—for once, this paper is in absolute accord with the methods of this notorious gunman, Race Williams. We want an end to these outrages. We want the men who are responsible for them. And we want them—in the parlance of the Old West—“Dead or alive.”