The Adventures of Paul Pry

The Racket Buster

To the police, he was a baffling, dangerous mystery, this powerful czar of the underworld. But to Paul Pry and “Mugs” Magoo, he was only the goose that laid their golden eggs.

Paul Pry lounged in well-dressed ease on a corner in the congested business district. From time to time he received provocative glances from passing women. But the eyes of Paul Pry were fastened upon the huddled figure of “Mugs” Magoo.

Mugs Magoo had earned his nickname years before when he had been the camera-eye man for one of the police administrations. A political shake-up forced him out. An accident took off his right arm at the shoulder. Booze had done the rest.

Paul Pry had found Mugs Magoo selling pencils on the street, had taken a liking to the man, learned his history, and reached a working arrangement to their mutual advantage. For Paul Pry was an opportunist of the highest degree of skill and efficiency.

Even the closest observer would have failed to observe any connection between the slender, debonair young man on one corner and the huddled figure of the crippled pencil-seller on the other. Yet between the two passed the flowing stream of human traffic, and that stream was instantly checked by Mugs Magoo, who knew every denizen of the underworld.

A young woman, modestly attired, strikingly beautiful, gazed with dazed eyes at the snarl of traffic. Her clothes proclaimed her as coming from the country. Her air of innocent unsophistication fitted nicely with the round-eyed wonder of her expression.

Mugs Magoo dropped the hat containing his stock of pencils some two inches, and seeing Mugs’ signal, Paul Pry knew that the woman was a dip or pickpocket.

His keen eyes flashed over her in swift appraisal, then darted back to Mugs Magoo, and Mugs knew that his employer was not interested.

A short, well-tailored man strutted past, shoulders back, chin up. His face was a little pasty. His manner held a little too much assurance.

Mugs Magoo let his glassy eyes flicker once over the man’s features, then the hand which held the hat raised and swept in a half circle. Paul Pry interpreted the signal to mean that the man was a gangster and a killer, a gun for a mob, and a topnotcher in his profession.

But Paul Pry’s eyes did not even give the gangster a second glance. He was waiting for some choice titbit to drift into his net.

Half an hour passed without any interchange of signals. Mugs Magoo, crouched against the wall of a bank building, sold a few pencils, mumbled a few words of thanks as coins clinked into his hat, and surveyed the passing pedestrians with glassy eyes that never missed a face.

A thin, dour individual with ratty, suspicious eyes, pattered his way along the sidewalk with quick, nervous strides. Mugs Magoo’s gestures meant that the man was the pay-off for a gang of big rum-runners.

Paul Pry shook his head.

Another fifteen minutes and a man who might have been a banker paused on the corner, almost directly between Mugs Magoo and Paul Pry. Paul Pry moved abruptly to get the signals Mugs was making.

The man was slightly inclined to be fat. He was about forty-five. His cheeks were clean-shaven and massaged to pinkness. His motions were slow, weighted with the dignity of one who has accustomed himself to command. About him was none of the nervousness of a man who is forced to blast a living by the sheer force of his personality. Here was the calm assurance of one who reaps the crops others have sown. Serene, complacent, dignified, the big man with the broad chest and well-fitted waistcoat watched the flow of traffic with eyes that might have been concentrated rather upon some large financial problem than upon the composite rush of city traffic.

Mugs Magoo nodded his head, moved his hat in a circle, then shook it slightly. Paul Pry raised a hand to his hat, gave a flip to the cane which he held in his right hand, and sauntered a few steps toward the kerb.

Properly interpreted, those signals meant that Mugs Magoo had recognized the dignified individual as the scout of a powerful mob, and that the mob in question was the one headed by “Big Front” Gilvray.

And Mugs Magoo had not needed Pry’s answering signal to apprise him that his duties for the day were over. For it went without saying that any of the activities of Big Front Gilvray’s gang would be of absorbing interest to Paul Pry. Ever since Paul Pry had found that Gilvray was far too clever to let the police pin anything on him, and that the initials B F reputed in the underworld to stand for Big Front, really stood for Benjamin Franklin, Paul Pry had cultivated Gilvray as a pet aversion.

Mugs Magoo gathered up his pencils, put them in a voluminous pocket, scooped the few silver coins from his hat, got to his feet, and walked away.

The portly man continued to stand in dignified meditation, his eyes fixed upon the door of the Sixth Merchants & Traders National Bank. For anything that appeared in his face or figure to the contrary, he might have been a Wall Street banker, turning over in his mind the advisability of purchasing a controlling interest in the institution. Certainly no ordinary detective would ever have placed him as a gangster, scouting out information of value to his mob.

Five minutes passed. The gangster looked at his watch, and there was something impressive in the very motion of his well-manicured hand as he took the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket.

Two more minutes. There was the rumble of heavy wheels sounding a base note deeper than the whining tyres of the lighter traffic. An armoured truck rumbled to a stop before the side entrance of the bank.

Instantly special police cleared the space between door and truck. The end doors of the truck were opened. Two men with heavy revolvers bulging from shiny holsters stood at watchful attention. Employees of the bank trundled out two hand trucks loaded with small, but heavy wooden boxes.

The boxes were checked, and flung into the armoured truck. One of the armed men signed a paper. The steel doors clanged shut. The armed men entered the truck through another door which, in turn, clanged shut. Then there was the grating sound of bars sliding across steel. The special police walked back into the bank. The truck rumbled out into the stream of traffic, a rolling fortress, laden with wealth, impregnable.

The men inside had sub-machine guns, and were encased in bulletproof steel. Little slits gave them opportunity to fire in any direction. Bulletproof glass furnished their vision of the entire four points of the compass. There would be a special police escort waiting to receive the shipment at its destination. In the meantime, thousands of dollars, worth of gold was being moved safely and efficiently through the streets of the city.

The sides of the truck bore a sign, printed in the small letters of a firm that deals with conservative institutions in a conservative manner. “Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Co.”

Paul Pry inspected the sign with eyes that were slitted in concentrated thought. The truck turned a corner and was lost to sight. The gangster took a notebook from his pocket, took out his watch, and made a notation, apparently of the exact time.

Paul Pry managed to get a look at the face of the gangster. It was wreathed in a smile of satisfaction.

In impressive dignity, the man walked away, and Paul Pry followed him.

He walked for two blocks, and then approached the kerb. Almost instantly a huge, shiny machine drew up beside him. The car was driven by a slight individual whose skin was a dead white, whose eyes were pinpointed, but steady. In the rear of the car sat a large man whose flashing eyes were as keen as darting rapiers. Bushy brows covered those eyes as thunderheads cover the first flashes of lightning from a coming storm.

This was Big Front Gilvray. He might have been a United States senator, or a big corporation lawyer. He was, in fact, a crook, and a leader among crooks. The police had never pinned anything definite upon Big Front Gilvray.

The man Paul Pry had been following stepped into the car, and muttered something to Gilvray. To prove it, he produced the leather-backed notebook in which he had made a pencil entry at the exact time the armoured truck had received its cargo of gold.

The information was not so satisfactory to Gilvray as it had been to the man Pry had shadowed. Gilvray’s brows puckered together, his eyes filmed for a moment in thought. Then he shook his head slowly, judicially, in the manner of a judge who is refusing to act upon insufficient evidence. The car purred out from the kerb.

Paul Pry hailed a taxicab. Through the congested traffic he managed to keep close to the car. In the more open stretches of through boulevard he dropped some distance behind. But the big car rolled along at a rate of speed that was carefully timed to be within the law. Big Front Gilvray did not believe in allowing the police to get anything on him, even a petty traffic violation.

In the end, Paul Pry could have secured the same information from a telephone book that he paid a taxi driver seven dollars and five cents to secure. For the big, shiny automobile was piloted directly to a suburban house where B F Gilvray was living.

Paul Pry knew that house was listed in the telephone directory, that there would be a nameplate to the side of the door containing the words “Benjamin F Gilvray”.

Big Front Gilvray had given up his city apartment and moved into the suburbs. The house was set back somewhat from the street and was rather pretentious. There was a sweep of gravelled drive, a huge garage, a struggling hedge, some ornamental trees, and a well-kept lawn.

Paul Pry looked the place over, shrugged his shoulders, and had the cab drive him back to the city.

Paul Pry’s apartment was in the centre of the most congested district he could find. He liked the feel that he was in the midst of things, surrounded by thousands of humans. He had only to raise his window and the noises of traffic would roll into the apartment. Or, if traffic were momentarily silenced, there would sound the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of countless feet, plodding along the sidewalk.

Mugs Magoo was in the apartment, a bottle of whiskey at his elbow, a half emptied glass in his hand. He looked up with glassy eyes as Paul Pry entered.

“Find out anything, chief?”

“Not a thing, Mugs. The man you pointed out seemed to have gone to some trouble to find out exactly when an armoured truck left the Sixth Merchants & Traders National.”

“He would.”

“Meaning?”

“That guy was Sam Pringle. He’s one of Gilvray’s best men. He got an engineer’s education, and he believes in being thorough. When that bird writes down a seven it means a seven. It don’t mean six and a half, or about seven, or seven an’ a tenth. It means seven.” And Mugs Magoo drained the rest of the whiskey in his glass.

His tone was slightly thick. His eyes were watery underneath their film, and he talked with a loquacity which he reserved for occasions of alcoholic stimulation. But Paul Pry accepted this as a part of the man’s character. Mugs had cultivated the habit through too many years to put it lightly aside.

“What,” asked Paul Pry, “do you know of the Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company?”

“A sweet graft. The illegal crooks built it up for the legal crooks. They have to ship gold back and forth every once in a while, now that they have lots of branch banks, and payrolls and all that sort of thing. The crooks went at it too heavy and almost killed the goose that was layin’ the golden egg. A bunch of bankers got together and bought some armoured trucks. They’re lulus. No chance of cracking one of those things short of using a ton of dynamite. Then they bonded every employee, and got an insurance company to insure every cargo. Now the bank is responsible until the cargo gets aboard the truck. After that the bank don’t have nothin’ to worry about.”

Mugs poured himself another drink and then continued: “In some cities the banks own their own trucks. Here, it’s all done through this company. You watch ’em loading. You’ll see a string of officers guarding the sidewalks. But the minute the last sack of gold bangs down on the floor of the trucks and the driver signs a receipt, the bank pulls in its cops. If there should be a hold-up the next second the bank officers would just yawn. They’re covered by insurance, and bonds and guarantees. They should worry.”

Paul Pry nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. “And why should the Gilvray outfit be so interested in the time the armoured trucks make their appearance? Do you suppose they contemplate staging a hold-up just as the gold hits the sidewalk? Perhaps having a regular slaughter with machine guns?”

Mugs Magoo shook his head emphatically.

“Not those babies. They go in for technique. They pull their jobs like clockwork. I’m tellin’ you the department ain’t ever got a thing on Big Front. They know lots, but they can’t prove a thing. That’s how slick he is.”

Mugs Magoo reached for his glass of whiskey.

“Don’t get crocked,” warned Paul Pry.

“Son, there ain’t enough whiskey left in the world to crock me.”

“Lots of fellows have wrestled with old John Barleycorn, Mugs.”

“Yeah. I ain’t wrestlin’. I’m gettin’ ready to take the count whenever he slips over the kayo. But what the hell’s left in life for a guy with one arm and no job?”

“Maybe you could get on the force somewhere.”

“Not now. They keep too accurate records.”

And because the talk had made Mugs Magoo blue, he tossed off the entire glass at a gulp, and refilled it.

Paul Pry crossed to the north wall of his apartment. Here were drums, all sorts of drums. There were huge war drums, Indian ceremonial drums, snare drums, cannibal tom-toms. Paul Pry selected his favourite drum as a violinist might select a favoured instrument.

It was an Indian rain drum of the Hopi tribe. It was made from a hollowed log of cottonwood, the wood burnt to proper temper and resonance. It was covered with skin, laced with rawhide thongs. The stick was made of juniper, wadded with a ball of cloth.

Paul Pry sat in a chair and boomed forth a few solemn sound-throbs from the interior of the instrument.

“Get that note of haunting resonance, Mugs. Doesn’t it arouse some savage instinct in your dormant memory cells? You can hear the pound of naked feet on the floor of a dance rock, get the suggestion of flickering camp fires, steady stars, twining bodies, dancing perhaps with rattlesnakes clasped in their teeth.”

Boom — boom — boom — boom!

The drum gave forth regular cadences of weird sounds — sounds that entered the bloodstream and heightened the pulse in the ears. Paul Pry’s face took on an expression of savage delight. This was the manner in which he prepared himself for intellectual concentration.

But Mugs Magoo merely drank whiskey and let his bleary eyes remain fixed on a spot in the carpet.

Slowly the tempo changed. The booming of the drum became more sombre. Gradually it faded into faint cadences of thrumming sound, then died away altogether. Paul Pry was in a rapt state of concentration.

Mugs Magoo poured himself another drink.

Fifteen minutes passed and became a half hour, and then Paul Pry chuckled. The chuckle rasped upon the silence of the room as a sound of utter incongruity.

Mugs Magoo cocked an eyebrow.

“Got somethin’?”

“I rather think I have, Mugs. Do you know, I have an idea I had better purchase a car.”

“Another one?”

“Another one. And I think I’d better register it in the name of B F Gilvray at 7823 Maplewood Drive.”

“Then he’d own it.”

“Certainly.”

“But you’d be paying for it.”

“Right again. But I’ve always wanted to make Gilvray a present.”

And Paul Pry, continuing to chuckle, arose, hung up the ceremonial drum, and reached for his stick, which contained a sword of finest steel, his hat and gloves.

“The bottle, Mugs, will have to do you for the rest of the day,” he said, and went out.

Mr. Philip Borgley, first vice president of the Sixth Merchants & Traders National, regarded the dapper individual who smiled at him with such urbane assurance, and then consulted the slip of pasteboard which was held between his fingers.

“Mr. Paul Pry, eh?”

Paul Pry continued to smile.

The banker squirmed about in his chair and frowned. He did not encourage smiles during interviews. The great god of money must be approached in a spirit of proper reverence. And Philip Borgley wished to impress upon his customers that he was the priest of the great god.

“You do not have an account here?” There was almost accusation in the question.

“No,” remarked Paul Pry, and the smile became slightly more pronounced.

“Ah,” observed Borgley in a tone which had shattered the hopes of many a supplicant before the throne of wealth.

But the smile upon Paul Pry’s face remained.

“Well?” snapped the banker.

“The bank, I believe, has a standing reward for the recovery of stolen money?”

“Yes. In the event any is stolen.”

“Ah, yes. And does the bank, perhaps, offer any rewards for crime prevention?”

“No, sir. It does not. And may I suggest that if idle curiosity prompted you to seek this interview it had best be terminated.” Banker Borgley got to his feet.

Paul Pry poked at the toe of his well-fitting shoe with the tip of his cane. “How interesting. The bank will pay to recover the spoils of crime after the crime had been committed, but it will do nothing to prevent the commission of the crime.”

The banker moved toward the mahogany gate that swung in the marble partition which walled off the lower part of his office.

“The reason is simple,” he said, curtly. “To reward the prevention of crime would merely make it possible for some gang to plan an abortive crime, then send some slick representative here to shake us down for not committing the crime they themselves had planned.”

There was no attempt to disguise the suspicion in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” said Paul Pry. “I guess, under those circumstances, I’ll have to let the crime go through and collect a reward for recovery.”

Philip Borgley hesitated, and it was apparent from his manner that he was debating whether or not he should call the police.

Paul Pry leaned forward.

“Mr. Borgley, I am about to make a confession.”

“Ah!” snapped the banker, and returned to his chair.

Paul Pry lowered his voice until it was hardly above a whisper. “Will you treat my admission in confidence?”

“No. I accept confidences only from depositors.”

“Sorry,” Paul Pry said.

“You were about to make a confession?”

“Yes. I’m going to tell it to you. But it’s a secret. I’ve never admitted it before.”

“Well?”

“I’m an opportunist.”

The banker straightened and his face darkened.

“Are you, by any chance, trying to play a practical joke, or are you just trying to act smart?”

“Neither. I called to warn you of a theft of rather a large sum of money which is due to take place within the next few days. I am, however, an opportunist. I live, Mr. Borgley, by my wits, and my information is never imparted gratuitously.”

“I see,” said the banker, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “And let me point out to you, Mr. Pry, that this bank doesn’t temporize with crooks. This bank is well guarded, and the guards are instructed to shoot to kill. This bank is wired with the last word in burglar alarms. This bank is protected by devices which I do not care to discuss in detail. If any crook can rob us of any of this money he is welcome to it. And if any crook tries it, this bank will send that crook to the penitentiary. So now you understand. Have I made myself clear?”

Paul Pry yawned and got to his feet.

“I would say about twenty per cent would be about right. Let us say two hundred dollars on every thousand you lose. That, of course, is for recovery. I would offer to prevent the crime for a mere ten per cent.”

Banker Borgley quivered with rage.

“Get out,” he yelled.

Paul Pry smiled as he strolled leisurely through the mahogany gate.

“By the way,” he said, “I feel quite sure your disposition is such that you would be most unpopular. I understand your best friends won’t mention it. I am mentioning it because I am not your best friend. Good morning!”

The banker jabbed a finger on a button. An emergency alarm sounded and an officer came on the run.

“Show this gentleman out!” yelled the banker.

Paul Pry bowed his thanks. “Don’t mention it. So good of you,” he drawled.

The officer grasped Paul Pry’s arm, just above the elbow, and instantly the smile vanished from Paul Pry’s face. He turned to the banker.

“Are your orders that I should be ejected? Do you suggest that this officer lay his hands upon me?”

And something in the cold tone brought Borgley to a realization of lawsuits and assault actions.

“No, no,” he said, hastily, and the officer dropped his hand from Paul Pry’s arm.

“The price,” said Paul Pry, “will be two hundred and fifty dollars for each thousand recovered. Good morning.”

Truck number three of the Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company lumbered out of the garage where the trucks were stored. The driver had a series of yellow sheets in his pocket, a route list of places where calls were to be made and valuable shipments picked up.

It was a hot day, and the truck was empty. There was not five cents’ worth of loot in the entire machine, and the guards were naturally enjoying the currents of air which came through the open windows. Later on, when the truck would become a rolling treasure chest, the guards would have to crouch within the hot steel tank, windows rolled up, suspicious eyes scrutinizing the surrounding traffic, perspiration smearing oily skins in a perpetual slime.

Now both driver and guard were relaxed, taking life easy. Their work had become mere routine to them. The contents of the boxes they carried meant nothing more to them than do the contents of packing cases to the drivers of department store trucks.

They were ten blocks from the garage, rolling down the boulevard with the steady speed of controlled momentum. There came a moment when there was no other traffic in sight.

The light car which flashed from the side street and disregarded the arterial stop, crashed against the kerb, skidded, and sideswiped the big armoured truck.

There was the sound of a splintering crash. The driver of the truck clamped his foot on the brake pedal. He had lost a little paint from the sides of the steel car. The flivver was wrecked. Its driver was jumping up and down, gesticulating.

“What the devil do you mean hogging the road? I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—”

The truck driver unwound himself from behind the wheel of the armoured car and jumped to the ground.

“Sa-a-ay,” he snarled. “How do you get that way?”

The man who had driven the light car moved his left with the trained precision of a professional fighter. The function of that left was to measure the distance, hold the outthrust jaw of the truck driver steady. It was the flashing right which crossed to the button of the jaw and did the damage.

“Hey, you!” yelled a startled guard, and jumped out of the truck. “You’re in the wrong. What the devil are you trying to do? I’m an officer, and—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. A black, shiny car slid smoothly to a stop.

“I saw it,” said a man and jumped to the ground. “It was the truck’s fault.”

“What in hell—” yelled the infuriated guard.

The truck guard stopped. The gun that bored into his middle was held in a steady hand, and the eyes of the man who held it were aglitter with businesslike efficiency.

“Get into that car and be damned quick about it, both of you,” said the man, as he swung his gun to cover the two astonished guards.

At that moment the door opened and two men stepped out. The guards’ jaws sagged with astonishment, for these men were attired in an exact replica of their own clothing. There were the olive drab shirts with the insignia of the Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company; the identical caps with their shields, the belted trousers with their holstered weapons dangling from belts, the puttees, the polished shoes.

They never fully recovered from their gasps of surprise, for a tap with slungshot collapsed them both like a sack of meal. Men moved with studied efficiency, and the two unconscious guards were in the shiny automobile before the first of an oncoming procession of cars came abreast of the scene of the accident.

Out of the little cluster of traffic two or three cars stopped. The drivers of these cars saw nothing unusual. The uniformed men who stood by the side of the truck were gravely exchanging licence numbers with the driver of the demolished light car who was very, very meek.

The shiny sedan with drawn side curtains purred away. The meek man accepted a lift with a passing motorist. The armoured truck rumbled away, and only the stolen flivver was left by the kerb to mark the first step in the efficient plans of Big Front Gilvray.

From there on, it was smooth sailing. The Sixth Merchants & Traders National had some rather heavy gold shipments to make, and had telephoned its order for the truck to be at the door at a certain time.

The truck arrived, on time to the minute. The side door popped open, and special officers patrolled the sidewalk. Passing pedestrians gawked at the sight of the heavy boxes thudded to the floor of the armoured car. The special officers watched the faces of the pedestrians with vigilance. The truck driver yawned as he signed the receipt for the given number of boxes.

The bank was rather casual in the matter. The drivers were bonded, the contents of the truck insured. The shipment had been safely transferred into the hands of the Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company. There was nothing to worry about. It was mere routine.

The guard slammed the door shut. The driver crawled in behind the wheel, and the truck rumbled away into traffic.

The truck was next seen abandoned by the kerb in a residential district. Residents had noticed certain boxes being transferred to a delivery truck. They could give little additional information. The ones who made the transfer had worn conventional uniforms, and the residents had not been overly curious — at first.

The captured guards were released two hours later. They were groggy, mortified, enraged, and they had aching heads. They were able to give only a vague description of the men who had engineered the capture of the truck, and the police knew that these men, unmasked as they were, were crooks imported especially for this one job.

They were at a standstill, but they hesitated to admit it. They made a great show of getting fingerprints from the armoured car, but they might as well have saved their time.

Philip Borgley immediately reported his interview with Paul Pry, and insisted that Pry must be one of the robbers. The police laughed. They had crossed the trail of Paul Pry before. That young man was just what he claimed to be — an opportunist. He had solved several crimes, and in every event had collected a reward. The total of those rewards amounted to a tidy income.

But the police had investigated Paul Pry from one side to the other. His methods were shrouded in mystery. His technique was baffling. But he was not in league with any criminal.

All of which called Paul Pry to the attention of the directors of the bank who were in session.

At about that time the bank’s counsel delivered his opinion. The Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company was not responsible for the loss. They had never sent a truck to the bank, had never signed for the shipment. The theft of the truck had been completed before it called at the bank. Therefore, the bank had voluntarily delivered its shipment of gold to two crooks.

The directors promptly announced a reward for the recovery of the stolen gold. But gold is hard to identify and easy to divide. It looked very much as though the bank was about to make a rather large entry in red ink upon its books of account.

Paul Pry knew of the reward within half an hour of the time it was announced. He telephoned the bank to verify the report, and then sauntered to the parking station which was around the corner from his apartment.

He had sufficient information to lay before the police to secure a search warrant for the residence of Benjamin F Gilvray, and doubtless recover the missing coin. But Paul Pry had no intention of killing the goose that laid his golden eggs. Big Front Gilvray had indirectly furnished Paul Pry with a very nice income during the past few months.

At the parking station, Paul Pry surrendered a ticket and had delivered to him a new, shiny automobile. This automobile was registered in the name of Benjamin F Gilvray, 7823 Maplewood Drive, although the information would have come as a distinct shock to Benjamin F Gilvray.

Paul Pry drove the new car to a point well out of traffic, parked it, and switched to a red roadster which was registered in his own name. He drove this roadster to a point about a block and a half from the residence at 7823 Maplewood Drive, and parked it. Then he called a taxicab and returned to the place where he had parked the new automobile he had registered in the name of the arch-gangster.

In a deserted side street, Pry stopped the car, opened the toolbox, and took out a big hammer. With this hammer he started operations on the left front fender.

When he had finished, the car presented a striking appearance. The shiny newness of its factory finish was marred by a left front fender which was as battered as a wad of discarded tinfoil. The paint had been chipped off. The fender had been rubbed against a telephone pole and dented in countless places.

By this time it was the dusk of early evening, and Paul Pry blithely piloted his new car out into the boulevard.

At a side street where there was a little traffic, yet enough potential danger to warrant an automatic signal, Paul parked the car and awaited his opportunity.

A traffic officer stood just under the automatic signal box on the south-west corner, peering sharply at such machines as passed. He was there to arrest violators, the theory being that the amount thus received in fines would more than offset his salary.

When Paul Pry considered the moment opportune, he eased his car away from the kerb. The street was deserted as far as he could see in both directions. The traffic signal was against him.

The rest was absurdly simple.

With the bewildered stupidity of a new driver, he slowly drove the car out into the middle of the intersection and brought it to a stop only when the whistle of the officer on duty had blown its third imperative summons.

The position in which the car had stopped was such that Paul had an uninterrupted view up and down both streets. He was, in fact, almost in the exact centre of the intersection.

The traffic officer, striding purposefully and irately to the left side of the machine, took due note of the crumpled fender and the new finish of the car. His voice held that tone of patient weariness with which mothers address wayward children after waywardness has become a habit.

“I suppose you’re blind and can’t see, and deaf and can’t hear. You didn’t know there was a traffic signal, nor hear me yelling for you to stop.”

Paul Pry drew himself up with dignity.

“You,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “can go to hell. I am B. F. Gilvray, Benjamin Franklin Gilvray.”

The officer, his ears attuned to expectation of humble excuses, and half-inclined to be charitable with the driver of a new car, recoiled as though he had been struck. His face darkened, and the air of patient sarcasm slipped from him.

“You half-pint of a lounge lizard! You start talking to me like that and I’ll push your nose so hard it’ll stick wrong side out the back of your head. Who the bloody hell do you think you’re talking to?”

And he thrust his rage-mottled face over the edge of the front door and glowered at Paul Pry.

Pry made no answer, none whatever.

For a full five seconds the officer glowered, hoping that the culprit would give him an excuse to use sufficient force to make an arrest on the charge of resisting an officer. But Paul Pry remained immobile.

The officer snorted and went to the front of the machine. He took down the licence number, strode majestically back to the car and jerked open the left front door.

“Got your fender smashed. Did that just recently, didn’t yuh?”

“That, my man, is none of your business.”

The officer’s hand shot into the car, clutched the collar of Paul Pry’s coat, and Paul Pry came violently out from behind the steering wheel.

“Sa-a-ay, you’ve got lots to learn, you have. Get out your driving licence and be quick about it. You’re going to take a drive to headquarters. That’s where you’re going!”

And, still holding Paul Pry by the collar, he reached in his free hand and ripped out the registration certificate.

There was no traffic up either street. The intersection showed no approaching headlights. There were no pedestrians. Paul Pry had carefully chosen his corner and his time. Abruptly he changed from a passive but impudent citizen in the hands of the law, to a bundle of steel muscles and wire-hard sinews.

“Crack!” the impact of his fist on the side of the officer’s head sounded like a muffled pistol shot.

The officer staggered back, rage, surprise and pain on his features. Paul Pry snapped his left home with that degree of accurate precision in timing which denotes the trained fighter.

The blow seemed almost unhurried, so perfectly timed was it, so gracefully were the arm and shoulder swung behind the punch. But the officer went down like a sack of meal, the registration certificate still clutched in his left hand.

Paul Pry got into the automobile, slipped in the clutch and purred down the street, turned on the next through boulevard and drove directly in front of the residence of Big Front Gilvray, where he parked the automobile.

Then he strolled across the street, sat down in the shadow of a hedge, and smoked a cigarette.

The house of Big Front Gilvray showed as a gloomy and silent pile of darkness. There was no sign of light from the windows, no sound of occupancy from within. The house was shrouded in watchful silence. But it was a tense silence. One sensed that perhaps there might be a cautious face, pressed against the glass of an upper window, surveying the street — that other faces at the four corners of the house might be cautiously inspecting the night.

It was a full half-hour before Paul heard the wail of a siren, the sound of a clanging gong. The street reflected the rays of a red spotlight. The police were going to make something of a ritual of it. They had brought the patrol wagon with them.

Paul Pry walked down the street to the place where he had left his roadster, got in, started the motor, and warmed up the engine. Then he switched off the ignition the better to hear any sounds that the night had to offer.

The wagon drew up to the big residence with something of a flourish.

“Here we are, boys!” yelled someone. “Lookit the car! It’s the kind Bill said, and the front fender’s caved.”

Another voice growled, “Drag him out.”

The police car discharged figures who moved with grim determination up the walk to the house. The front steps boomed the noise of their authoritative feet into the night, and there came the sound of nightsticks beating a tattoo upon wooden panels.

But the door didn’t open immediately.

The house gave forth signs of muffled activity. Then a porch light clicked on, and Big Front Gilvray stood in the doorway, his frame blocking out the soft glow from a lighted hallway.

Big Front lived true to his name. He put on a bold front. Behind him there were men armed with machine guns, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible; but these men were out of sight, hidden where their guns could sweep hallways and staircases with the most deadly angle of fire.

Paul Pry heard Gilvray’s booming voice.

“What in hell is the meaning of this outrage?”

It was Gilvray’s code to be impressive, always to keep the other man on the defensive.

The only answer to the question was a counter question from one of the officers.

“Are you Benjamin F Gilvray of 7823 Maplewood Drive?”

“I am. And I want to know—”

What Big Front Gilvray wanted to know was drowned in the sound made by a heavy fist impacting soft flesh. There followed the scuffle of feet, the thud of blows. After an interval someone said, “You’re under arrest,” and a knot of struggling figures threshed their way toward the patrol wagon.

There was the clanging of a bell, the wail of a siren, the roar of an exhaust, and the patrol wagon was on its way. From within could be seen moving figures, silhouetted against the lighted ribbon of roadway.

Big Front Gilvray was resisting arrest and the figures were doing their stuff.

Paul Pry started the motor on his car and slipped to the side street. From this position he could command a view of the alley entrance from the garages, also of the gravelled driveway.

Lights blazed on in the house, then were subdued. Doors banged. There was the sound of running steps. A car shot out of one of the garages, skidded at the turn into the side street, and roared into the night. It was filled with men.

A truck followed. There were two men in the driver’s seat. The cargo of the truck was covered with canvas. It was not particularly bulky.

Paul Pry followed the red light of the truck.

He kept well to the rear, yet, with the flexibility of his powerful roadster, was able to command the situation. The truck could not get away. Paul Pry drove without headlights and was invisible to the occupants of the truck.

The chase led for nearly a mile, and then the truck turned into a public garage. Paul Pry drove around the block and piloted his red roadster into the same garage.

The truck of the gangsters was parked at one end of the place and a sleepy-eyed attendant came forward with a ticket. His eyes were swollen with sleep, and he sucked in a prodigious yawn as he stretched his hands high above his head.

“I’d better park it,” said Paul Pry. “The reverse is sticking a little.”

The man in the dirty overalls yawned again and sleepily pushed a ticket into the crack over the hinges of the hood. That ticket was numbered, a string of black figures on a red background. The other half of the ticket, bearing a duplicate number, he thrust into Paul Pry’s hand.

“Right next to the truck?” asked Paul casually, and didn’t wait for an answer.

He drove the car down the dimly lit aisle of the garage, backed it into the first vacant stall to the side of the truck, switched off motor and lights, and got out.

It was, perhaps, significant that he got out of the car on the side that was nearest the truck, and that his hand rested against the hood of the powerful truck as he walked between the stalls.

In the dim light of the place, the sleepy-eyed attendant had no idea that Paul Pry was switching squares of pasteboard, that the red ticket which had been thrust into the hood of the roadster now adorned the truck, and that the truck ticket was transferred to the roadster.

Paul Pry had hardly intended to play the game in just that manner. He felt certain the gangsters, alarmed over the arrest of Big Front Gilvray, would transfer the treasure cargo, but he had hardly counted upon the audacious move by which they sought to insure safety for themselves.

It was simple. The very simplicity of it was its best protection. They felt the police might be on their trail. Therefore the thing to do was to place the stolen cargo where it would never be found. What more simple solution than to treat the boxes of gold as just an ordinary truck cargo, park the truck for the night, and make no further move until they heard from Gilvray.

If the police had the goods on Gilvray, the gangsters could take the truck’s cargo, transfer it to fast touring cars and leave the city. If it was a false alarm, the gold was removed from the house which might be searched on general principles. If the police had complete information and knew the emergency headquarters the gang had established, a raid would reveal no incriminating evidence.

Paul Pry, however, was an opportunist. He had intended only to make certain that the gold was collected in one place, and then notify the police of that hiding place and claim the reward. As it was, he had an opportunity to make a much more spectacular recovery of the treasure, and leave the gang intact — an organization of desperate criminals, ready to commit other crimes upon which Pry might capitalize.

So it happened that when Pry left the garage he had with him a square of pasteboard containing a number, and, upon that truck with its illegal cargo, was a duplicate ticket containing the same number.

Paul Pry chuckled to himself as he walked out into the night.

He telephoned Sergeant Mahoney at headquarters.

“Pry talking, sergeant. There’s a reward out for the recovery of the gold that was slicked from the Sixth Merchants & Traders National?”

“I’ll say there is. You haven’t got a lead on it, have you?”

“Yeah. What say you drive out to the corner of Vermont and Harrison? I’ll meet you there with the gold. You take the credit for the recovery and keep my name out of it. We split the reward fifty-fifty.”

The sergeant cleared his throat.

“I’d like to do that all right, Pry. But it happens you’ve figured in two or three rewards lately. How come you get the dope so easily?”

Paul Pry laughed. “Trade secret, sergeant. Why?”

“Well, you know, someone might claim you were pulling the crimes in order to get the rewards.”

“Don’t be silly, sergeant. If I’d taken the risk of pulling this job I wouldn’t surrender the coin for a fraction of its value. These boxes don’t contain jewels. They contain gold coin and currency. I could take the stuff out and spend it — if I didn’t want to turn it back. But if you think it might make trouble, we’ll just forget it and I won’t back the shipment and you can go ahead and work on the case in your own way.”

“No, no, Pry! I was just thinking out loud. You’re right. The corner of Harrison and Vermont? I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Paul Pry hung up the telephone, then rang his apartment. Mugs Magoo answered the ring.

“You drunk, Mugs?”

“No.”

“Sober?”

“No.”

“All right. Get a cab and pick up a pair of overalls and a cap, also a jumper. Get a leather coat if you can’t get a jumper. Bring them to me in a rush. You’ll find me at a drug store out on Vermont, near a Hundred and Tenth Street. Make it snappy.”

And Paul Pry settled himself comfortably in the drug store, picked up a magazine, purchased a package of cigarettes and prepared to enjoy himself.

It took Mugs Magoo half an hour to bring the things. Paul Pry changed in the taxicab and arrived at the garage with clothes that were soiled and grimy. A little tobacco in his eyes gave them a reddened inflamed appearance.

He was cursing when the sleepy-eyed attendant, dozing in a chair tilted back against the office wall, extended a mechanical hand.

“That damned truck. Can you beat it? I don’t any more than get to sleep when the boss rings up and tells the wife I’ve got to take that load down to the warehouse tonight, pick up a helper and start on another trip.”

The attendant looked at Paul Pry with a puzzled frown.

“You the one that brought in that truck?”

Paul yawned and flipped him the red pasteboard.

“Uh huh,” he said.

The attendant walked back to the truck, compared the numbers on the tickets, nodded.

“Your face looked familiar, but I thought—”

He didn’t finish what he had thought.

Paul Pry got in the truck, switched on the ignition, got the motor roaring to life, turned on the headlights and drove to the street. Mugs Magoo in the taxicab, an automatic clutched in his left hand, guarded the rear. The treasure truck rumbled down the boulevard.

At the corner of Harrison, Sergeant Mahoney was parked in a police car. He shook hands with Paul Pry and ran to the canvas covered cargo of the truck. A moment’s examination convinced him.

“God, there should be a promotion in this!”

Paul Pry nodded.

“You drive the truck to headquarters. Claim you shook the information out of a stoolie. I’ll drive your roadster to my apartment. You can have one of your men pick it up later. By the way, I’ve got a red roadster out at Magby’s Garage, a mile or so down the street. I’ve lost my claim ticket for it. Wish you’d send a squad out there and tell the garage man it’s a stolen car. You can leave it in front of my apartment when you pick up your car.”

Sergeant Mahoney surveyed Paul Pry with eyes that were puckered to mere glinting slits.

“Did you switch tags and steal this truck, son?”

Paul Pry shook his head. “I can’t very well answer that question.”

“Afraid of something? You’d have police protection if you committed a technical robbery of a gangster truck.”

Pry laughed. “No. There’s a more personal reason than that.”

“Which is?”

“That I don’t want to kill the goose that’s laying my golden eggs.”

Sergeant Mahoney emitted a low whistle.

“Golden eggs is right! But you’re monkeying with dynamite, son. You’ll be pushin’ up daisies if you play that game.”

“Possibly,” agreed Paul Pry. “But, after all, that’s what makes the game more interesting. And it’s something that’s entirely between me and—”

“And who?” asked the officer eagerly.

“And a gentleman to whom I have presented a new car,” said Paul Pry. With which cryptic remark, he walked toward the police roadster.

“Take good care of that truck, and good night, sergeant. Let me know about your promotion.”

The sergeant was clambering into the driver’s seat of the truck as Paul Pry stepped on the starter of the police roadster. In the morning another consignment of golden eggs would find its way to him — one half of the reward money posted by the bank for a loss which it might have prevented.