Abstract* E-mail: kazakov@quark.stu.neva.ruWe propose a novel method enabling to create a high-contrast dark resonance in the 87 Rb vapor D 2 -line. The method is based on an optical pumping of atoms into the working states by a two-frequency, linearly-polarized laser radiation propagating perpendicularly to the probe field. This new scheme is compared to the traditional scheme involving the circularly-polarized probe beam only, and significant improvement of the dark resonance parameters is found. Qualitative considerations are confirmed by numerical calculations.