It’s the McCoy

Chapter Seven It’s the McCoy

It was one forty. Paul Pry, pacing the floor of the secret hide-out apartment maintained by Mugs Magoo and himself glanced for the tenth time in the last five minutes at his wrist watch. There was still no sign of Mugs.

He crossed to the telephone, called the Altamont Hotel, and learned that the Rajah of Rajore was not in. He had left more than thirty minutes ago.

Paul Pry knitted his forehead in worried concentration. It had been necessary to leave a back trail to the spurious Rajah of Rajore and the Altamont Hotel in order to convince the gangsters that Merva Bond had been a victim rather than an accomplice. He had done that much as a gesture of gallantry, but it had been dangerous, and no one realized this more than Paul Pry. Now Mugs Magoo had left there thirty minutes ago. Ten minutes at the most should have sufficed to have brought him to the hide-out apartment.

Paul Pry waited for three long agonizing minutes. Then, slipping an automatic in the holster under his arm, taking his sword-cane, making certain the tear-gas cartridge was in position in the handle, he left the apartment, rumbled down in the automatic elevator. A moment later he sent his high-powered convertible roaring out into the night.

He was halfway to the Altamont Hotel when he met the taxicab. It was only a fleeting glimpse, but Paul Pry saw the huge figure of Mugs Magoo seated in the back of the cab, his left arm holding something bulky to his breast.

Beset by mingled feelings of relief and exasperation, Paul Pry slowed and swerved toward the curb, preparatory to sending the car into a turn. He had grasped the wheel with his gloved hand to give it the quick spin which would start the big car swinging, when the black sedan rocketed down the side-street, swung into a screaming turn at the corner, the body swaying far over on its springs as the car made the sharp turn at high speed.

Paul Pry swung his car. He caught a glimpse of Mugs Magoo’s startled face as Mugs turned to look back, his features illuminated by the dazzling brilliance of the headlights from the pursuing car. Then, with a crash, the sedan tore into the taxicab, sent the cab lurching to the curb, up over the curb to the sidewalk, into a fire hydrant which promptly proceeded to spout up a geyser of water.

From the interior of the businesslike black sedan, the muzzle of a sub-machine gun protruded into the light.

From the wreck of the cab, slowly emerged Mugs Magoo, clasping a quart whiskey bottle by its neck in his left hand.

The muzzle of the sub-machine gun pointed squarely at Mugs Magoo’s chest. The man with the gun said something which Paul Pry couldn’t catch.

Pry’s big coupe was now turned. He switched off the lights and pushed the throttle down to the floorboard. The supercharged motor roared into life as the car leaped ahead.

The muzzle of the sub-machine gun wavered in a half circle, then grew tense and rigid. Mugs Magoo flung himself forward and down.

The sub-machine gun roared into action, sending little spurts of blue-orange flame ripping apart the darkness. The cab driver screamed with terror.

The man in the black sedan depressed the muzzle of the sub-machine gun so he could rake Mugs Magoo’s prostrate form. Momentarily, the firing ceased.

The bumper on Paul Pry’s car was of railroad iron, camouflaged to look like a gewgaw of chrome steel. As his car ate up the distance, Pry braced himself for the impact, gripping the steering wheel, pushing down on the throttle.

The crash awoke echoes in the street. The black sedan seemed for a moment to telescope against the front of Paul Pry’s charging vehicle. Then the sedan shot ahead as though it had been a projectile fired from a gun. It turned half around, tottered, went over on its side.

Paul Pry slammed on his brakes, kicked the gears into neutral, grabbed his cane and slid out from behind the steering wheel. Quick as he was, Mugs Magoo was ahead of him.

Men were standing up in the overturned sedan. An automatic revolver spattered viciously. Mugs Magoo, swinging the whiskey bottle, charged forward. The whiskey bottle struck a gangster on the head, glanced off to splinter against the side supports of the car. Mugs Magoo’s strong left hand gripped the smooth neck of the bottle which terminated in the jagged saw-tooth of broken glass. With a roar, Mugs Magoo mingled into the melée.

Paul Pry ran to take care of those on the other side of the wrecked sedan. Twice the biting blade of his sword-cane flashed out. Each time it came away stained with red. Mugs Magoo, bellowing with rage, was swinging his jagged weapon.

Three seconds later, Paul Pry yelled: “Into the car, Mugs. I hear a siren.”

Mugs Magoo paused for a moment to survey the interior of the taxicab, finally dragging a bulky package into sight.

Paul Pry held open the door of the convertible. Mugs climbed heavily into the seat just as a police car swung around the corner two blocks away, the blood red of its spotlight emphasizing the scream of its siren.

Looking up, Paul Pry became conscious of half dressed forms silhouetted against windows, heard the screaming of women, the shouting of men.

“Hang on,” Paul Pry said.

The police car slowed momentarily at the scene of the battle long enough to hear the shouted comments of the spectators, long enough to disgorge an officer who stood guard with a riot shotgun, awaiting the arrival of an ambulance and patrol car. Then the police car shot forward.

Paul Pry had two blocks head start.

At the end of half a mile, the two blocks had become six. At the end of a mile, he tried a screaming turn at such high speed that the police car, throwing on its brakes to duplicate the same maneuver, lost sight of its quarry.

Five minutes later, Paul Pry drove his somewhat battered convertible into his hide-away garage, switched off the motor and headlights, and, with only the dashlight illuminating his cameo-like profile, grinned at Mugs Magoo. “That,” he announced, “is that.”

Mugs nodded. Gone was his gloomy pessimism. His face was a mask of grinning joy.

“What the devil kept you?” Paul Pry asked. “I rang the Altamont Hotel, and they said you’d left forty minutes before I started.”

“I had,” Mugs Magoo conceded. “But when I was within a block of the place, I suddenly remembered I’d forgotten my water pipe.”

“And you mean you went back to get that narghile?”

“That’s right,” Mugs Magoo proclaimed enthusiastically. “Best smoke a man ever had. It’s the real McCoy.”

“Mugs,” Paul Pry proclaimed, after the manner of a judge pronouncing sentence, “never again do you get an allowance of three bottles.”

Mugs Magoo grinned. “Well, to tell you the truth, you said my allowance was three bottles a day. But you didn’t say just when I should drink ’em. Well, I had one quart in the morning. That was my regular allowance for not being a rajah. So as rajah, I was entitled to three quarts, and I saved those until along in the evening, and then, of course, after midnight it was a new day so I started in on the other three quarts — and those damn hoodlums wrecked one quart... But gosh, it was fun. I didn’t realize there was that much joy left in life. I guess I was born to be a cop. It don’t make so much difference whether you have one arm or two. When you can wade into a bunch of rats and start smearing ’em all over the place, it really amounts to something.”

Paul Pry sighed. “You’re the one who heads the daisy-pushing brigade.”

Mugs Magoo said: “I thought, because I was a cripple, my fighting days were over— Whoopee!... Come on, son. I’ve got a credit of a quart of whiskey. That’s the McCoy, too. Let’s go up and drink to the health of the daisy-pushers.”

Chuckling, Paul Pry switched out the dashlight.

From the street outside could be heard the scream of the siren on a radio car as it cruised fruitlessly, searching for a cream-colored convertible.