The Adventures of Paul Pry

The Daisy Pusher

“Big Front” Gilvray was sore — damned sore. That’s why he hired the slickest killer in the game to put an end to the mysterious Paul Pry. But Paul Pry, terror to both the police and gangsters alike, had an amazing, strange way of dealing with killers!

Paul Pry lounged at indolent ease upon what was, perhaps, one of the busiest corners in the high-class shopping district.

The early afternoon shoppers filed past in twin streams of eddying humanity. Occasionally some provocative glance was flashed at Paul Pry. But those glances were wasted, for Paul Pry had his entire attention centred upon a human derelict who crouched against the wall of a bank building and held forth a hat filled with pencils.

The crouched figure presented a perfect picture of dejection — one arm gone at the shoulder, clothes shabby and unclean, face covered with a day’s growth of beard, eyes glassy with hopelessness.

Only a most shrewd observer would have noticed that there was any connection between this huddled wreck of humanity and the slender, well-dressed figure of Paul Pry, standing at graceful ease.

But the pencil vendor was “Mugs” Magoo, the man who never forgot a face.

Years before, Mugs Magoo had been the official camera-eye for one of the police administrations in a large city. A political shake-up had thrown him out. An accident had lost him his right arm at the shoulder, and booze had done the rest.

Paul Pry had cultivated Mugs Magoo as a casual acquaintance, had found out the man’s uncanny gift for remembering faces, and had employed the cripple.

Paul Pry might best be described as an opportunist. His activities were always within the law. The police frowned upon these activities, yet regarded the young man with a very wholesome respect. For Paul Pry’s total income ran into a very large figure each year. And yet he lived by his wits.

Mugs Magoo stared at the twin streams of pedestrians with glassy eyes and, from time to time, made signals with his head and hand. Such signals classified the various petty crooks who frequented the shopping lanes. An innocent girl from the country became a pickpocket under Mugs Magoo’s searching eyes. An open-faced countryman of rugged, sun-tanned honesty called forth Mugs’ signal for a confidence man. There was the usual assortment of bootleggers and petty criminals.

Only once did Mugs Magoo bow his head slightly, indicating that the man who was passing him at the moment was a big shot. Even then Paul Pry gave no answering signal, for Paul Pry was waiting for a break.

For seven days now the two had worked the streets without pause. Seven fruitless days of observation and signal, seven days of ceaseless scanning.

Mugs Magoo knew what Pry was waiting for — a crack at the gang of “Big Front” Gilvray.

The glassy eyes looked up into the passing faces.

“Pencils, mister?” said Mugs Magoo in his wheedling monotone.

The man strode by.

Mugs Magoo turned his eyes to the man behind.

“Pencils, mister?”

And, despite himself, something of the monotone had left his voice. There was a quaver of suppressed excitement, a note of tension.

But the ears of the man who was passing were not attuned to subtle tone variations on the part of street beggars. He strode past with eyes that never even flickered to the crouched form.

Mugs Magoo bowed his head, moved his hat in a circle and shook it slightly. Instantly 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.

Mugs Magoo took the pencils from his hat, scooped out a few silver coins, sighed and clapped the hat on his head. His duties for the day were over.

Paul Pry fell in behind the man who had attracted his attention. He was a dour-faced individual with an expression of frozen dignity stamped upon his immobile countenance. He walked with measured steps that were painfully precise and slow. His mouth was clamped in a rigid line of punctilious silence.

He was a scout for the powerful gang of Big Front Gilvray. Mugs Magoo’s signals had conveyed that much information to Paul Pry. And that much information was all that Pry needed to start him upon another of his spectacular adventures.

The gangster walked across the street, paused for a moment at a window display, then paced methodically down a side street where the sidewalks were a little less congested.

Paul Pry followed.

Before he had gone half the block, Pry was aware of two very curious things. One was that the man he shadowed was in turn shadowing another. The second thing was that an automobile crawled along in the stream of traffic, keeping exact pace with the gangster.

Paul Pry shot a glance at the occupants of that automobile. The man at the wheel was restless-eyed, alert. His hands were slender, well cared for and graceful. His neck was rather heavy, encased in the collar of a silk shirt and wrapped about with a ten-dollar scarf. His left ear was cauliflowered.

The man in the rear seat was holding an oblong something upon the side of the car. Paul Pry puckered his forehead as he recognized the nature of that object. It was a motion-picture camera.

The block was traversed. The automobile sped away on an open signal. The gangster scout continued his steady pacing.

Paul Pry determined to get a look at the man ahead, the one who was being tailed by the shadower who was in turn being shadowed. He quickened his pace, passed the gangster, walked on past the man the gangster was following, and paused at the corner, consulting with bewildered eyes an envelope he had pulled from his pocket. Then he glanced about him at the numbers on the buildings.

In that position he was able to flash a glance at the face of the man he wanted to observe.

He barely suppressed a start of surprise as his eyes fastened upon that face. It was a face upon which was stamped a frozen dignity, a punctilious politeness. The mouth was clamped in a rigid line of deliberate silence. In short, the face was an exact duplicate of the face of the gangster.

It was as though the gangster had suddenly become twins. Paul Pry’s startled eyes flashed from the man in the lead to the gangster who followed.

Their clothes were of the same pinstriped serge. Their collars were the same. Their ties were the same. Their shoes were the same. Their very facial expressions were the same, and they paced in deliberate dignity the pavements of the city street but a few yards apart.

Paul Pry consulted the back of the envelope he held in his left hand, lest the gangster should detect the interest in his eyes. But the precaution was needless. The gangster’s every sense seemed to be concentrated upon the figure he followed.

Once more Paul Pry fell into the rear of the procession.

There was no further trace of the automobile from which the motion pictures had been taken. The man in the lead entered a store, emerged after a few moments with two parcels. The gangster who shadowed dropped behind as though he had lost his interest. The man in the lead took a taxicab. The gangster turned and walked in the opposite direction. His gait ceased to be a measured pace of slow dignity and became, instead, a quick, nervous walk.

Paul Pry hesitated for barely two seconds, then stepped to the kerb and hailed a passing cab. He had determined to shadow the gangster’s double.

In doing this he encountered no difficulty whatever. The task was absurdly simple. The man in the cab ahead was driven directly to the exclusive residential district on Longacres Drive. His cab stopped before number 5793, and the man paid the driver the meter toll with a gesture of condescending dignity. Then he paced toward the house in frigid silence.

“That all, boss?” asked the driver of Paul Pry’s cab.

“That’s the end of it. Take me to the corner of Broadway and Gramercy.”

The cab driver spun the machine around the corner.

Paul Pry entered his apartment in the manner of one who is wrapped in thought.

Mugs Magoo was sprawled in an easy chair, a bottle of whiskey on the table at his side, a glass in his hand. He looked up with bleary eyes, raised his glass.

“Here’s mud ’n yer eye!”

Paul Pry deposited his hat and stick, sank into another chair and regarded his confederate with narrowed eyes.

“You’ve hit half the bottle since you left me, Mugs,” he said.

Mugs Magoo squirmed under the accusation of the tone.

“This here’s the last glass I’m drinkin’ until night,” he explained.

Paul Pry lit a cigarette.

“It’s your own business, Mugs,” he said. “I’m not the type to attempt to impose my will upon my fellow man, only you’ve got to keep fit if you’re going to work with me. I can’t use a brain that’s muddled in alcohol.”

Mugs Magoo laughed, but the laugh was nervous.

“Forget it. My brain uses alcohol as lubricatin’ oil. What’s on your mind, chief?”

“The gangster, who was he?”

Mugs Magoo finished the last drop in the glass, looked longingly at the bottle, then set the glass down on the table.

“Funny guy. Ain’t seen him for six years, but I heard he was with Gilvray now. He’s known as ‘Double’ Phil Delano. Used to be an actor, and a good one, too. He can double for anybody that’s anywhere near his size and build; an expert with the makeup and such stuff.

“They use him when they want an alibi. Double Phil Delano makes up as the guy he wants to alibi and sticks around. The guy goes to the restaurant he’s picked, speaks to all of his friends, kids a couple of dames along, and then settles down to some steady drinking.

“After a while he goes to the dressing-room and slips out. Double Phil Delano slips in and takes the place his alibi has just vacated. He’s a little slopped with drink, but quiet and not making a nuisance out of himself. Everybody sees him. He sits there and laps up a little booze and kills time until he gets a signal.

“Then he goes to the dressing-room. His alibi slips in, has a few more drinks, and then goes and talks with the proprietor or somebody and maybe drops his watch and busts it. That helps to fix the time.

“Later on when the bulls start prodding around on the back trail of the suspect they find an iron-clad alibi. That’s the racket of Double Phil Delano. He rakes down big money understudying the crooks that want to have things go just so.

“He was in disguise today. He was holdin’ his mouth funny, and he had a dignified expression on his map, but he’s got a little finger broken on his left hand. It’s a funny break. Once you’ve seen it you won’t forget it. I spotted that finger first. But I had to look a second time to make sure it was Phil.”

Mugs Magoo reached for the empty glass, then let his hand stop halfway to the table.

“Aw shucks!” he muttered thickly.

Paul Pry slitted his eyes into glittering concentration.

“Know the man he was shadowing?”

“Never saw him before, chief.”

Paul Pry nodded, beat upon the arm of his chair with his fingertips, then arose and crossed the room to a closet. The glass door of this closet showed an interior filled with drums. There were cannibal tribe drums, war drums, Indian ceremonial drums, snare drums and tom-toms. They hung from the walls of the closet in profusion.

Paul Pry selected a ceremonial drum of the South Seas. It was made of hide stretched across hollowed bamboo. Returning to his chair, he started a soft beating upon the taut surface of dried skin.

The apartment seemed fairly filled with the resulting noise, a throbbing sound that entered the pulses of the blood, boomed in the brain, rumbled back upon the ears from the walls of the apartment in maddening sound cadences.

“For the love o’ Mike!” exclaimed Mugs Magoo, moving restlessly in his chair. “That drum always gives me the willies. It makes my blood jump.”

Paul Pry nodded dreamily.

“It would. It’s the primitive song of power, of lust, of life. You can almost hear the stamping of bare feet, the cries of the women. It reminds me of a blazing fire, a circle of warriors, dancing plumes, shaking spears, pounding feet. And under it all, the sound of the drum, a background of primitive noise. Listen to it, Mugs!”

Boom... boom... boom.

Mugs Magoo got up from his chair.

“You hypnotize yourself with them drums, chief. It’s a habit. You’d better cut it out.”

Paul Pry shook his head dreamily.

“No. It helps my nerves. Go out to 5793 Longacres Drive and find out who owns the place. Tell ’em you’re from the water company. Get all the information you can. Take cabs in both directions and make it snappy. I have an idea we’ll have to use a little speed on this job.”

Mugs Magoo looked longingly at the whiskey bottle.

“Of course, if I’m going out—”

Paul Pry ceased his drumming to glare at the cripple.

“You’d better get started,” he finished for the hesitant Mugs.

“Yessir,” remarked Mugs Magoo, lurched to his feet, took his hat and was gone.

Behind him, Paul Pry drummed out sound cadences that reverberated through the apartment, low booming sounds that seemed almost without point of origin.

He was still in the same chair when Mugs returned. He had ceased to drum, but his eyes were pinpoints of concentration, and there was a pencil and a bit of paper in his hand.

He grinned at Mugs.

“Before you say a word, Mugs, I want to know if the man is the butler. If he is, I know the answer.”

Mugs Magoo’s glassy eyes widened in surprise.

“Sure he’s the butler, guy by the name o’ Pete Filbert, an’ the chap that owns the house is Rodney Goldcrest. They’re lousy with coin. The butler’s the last word. The folks are newly rich, awful rich an’ awful new.”

Paul Pry’s smile became a grin.

“Ah,” he said, and there was a purring undertone to his voice like that of a big tiger stalking its prey.

“You goin’ to tie into Big Front Gilvray again, chief?”

“Certainly, why?”

“It ain’t healthy. Gilvray’s a big-time guy. I’m tellin’ you, he’s made monkeys out of the police. They never can get anything on him, and he’s working all the time.”

“Well, what about it, Mugs?”

“Nothin’. Only I’d concentrate on somebody else for a while. Big Front Gilvray is dynamite.”

Paul Pry leaned forward and jabbed his forefinger at the chest of Mugs Magoo.

“Know what he is? He’s a crook. He has the name B F Gilvray, and the B F stands for Benjamin Franklin. It’s a hot note when a gangster sports the name of Benjamin Franklin on his nameplate. The boys call him Big Front, and he lives up to the name. By the time I get done with him, he won’t have any big front. I’m going to ride that man clean out of business. If the police can’t reach him, I can. He’s my goose that’s laying the golden egg. His crimes have netted me thousands of dollars in the last three months, and they’re going to net me more.”

Mugs Magoo shook his head.

“He’s too big, boss,” he warned. “You’ll be stretched out on a marble slab with weights on your eyelids.”

Paul Pry chuckled.

“Well, it’s a fair fight,” he said. Then he took his hat and stick and went out.

Hardly had the door closed than Mugs Magoo reached for the whiskey bottle and tilted it to his lips. Then, with a sigh of content, he dropped back into the cushioned chair and relaxed.

It was early in the evening when the ringing of the telephone aroused him from the sleep into which he had dropped. Paul Pry’s voice answered his hello.

“Hello, Mugs. Are you sober?”

Mugs Magoo rubbed his sleep-swollen eyes. Blinking in the light of the reading lamp, he glanced at the empty whiskey bottle, and grunted his reply.

“I ain’t been sober for seven years. Why should I celebrate now?”

“Are you pickled?”

“Son, I can’t get pickled. I get just so much inside of me, an’ then the blamed stuff evaporates through the pores of my skin as fast as I pour it in. Was there somethin’ I could do? I’m just right.”

“Yes,” said Paul Pry. “Come to the Bargemore Hotel and ask for George Crosby.” And the telephone receiver at the other end of the line clicked into place.

Mugs Magoo rubbed some of the sleep from his eyes. “Let’s hope this Crosby guy has got some drinkin’ whiskey,” he said, and reached for his shabby hat.

At the Bargemore Hotel his eyes widened in surprise when he found that George Crosby was none other than Paul Pry, registered under the assumed name, given a room, and already very much at home.

“I just wanted to show you the news,” said Pry.

He thrust one of the evening papers, damp from the press, under the eyes of the ex-detective.

Mugs Magoo scanned the screaming headlines.

Mugs Magoo grunted his interest, sat down in one of the typical overstuffed chairs with which the hotel room was furnished, and knitted his brows over the printed account.

When he had finished, he regarded Paul Pry with a speculative scowl.

“She was dressin’ for a ball,” he said.

“Precisely.”

“And the butler got drunk an’ slugged ’er. When she came to, her hundred thousand dollar diamond necklace was gone.”

“Correct.”

“But the butler was still there.”

“Exactly.”

“Stewed to the gills.”

“So the paper says.”

“And he couldn’t remember nothing about what had happened. He took a drink. He claims it was a single drink. But he got stewed on it an’ went blotto.”

“Well?”

“Oh, nothin’, but I can see what happened easy enough. They slipped him a drugged drink. Big Front Gilvray had a moll in the house, planted for the job probably. She jiggled a little powder in his drink. Then Double Phil Delano slipped in, pretended to be pie-eyed, hunted up the missus, had an argument, slugged her, took the diamond necklace, an’ left the poor butler to take the rap.”

Paul Pry nodded.

“That, Mugs, is exactly what happened. Only the thoughtful Mr. Delano went one step farther. He planted some stolen gems of small value upon the form of the unconscious butler. The police found them.”

“A slick frame-up,” remarked Mugs Magoo. “Double Phil Delano has been changin’ his tactics. He always went in for alibi stuff before. But now Big Front Gilvray has got hold of him he’s usin’ him for rough stuff. But it’s pretty smooth at that!”

Paul Pry nodded thoughtfully.

“There’s quite a bit in the paper about the Goldcrest history, Mugs. It seems they made their money on the stock market crash. They consistently sold everything short and stayed with it. They cleaned up a lot of money out of the misfortunes of others.”

“Yeah,” agreed Mugs Magoo. “I told you they was newly rich, awful rich an’ awful new.”

Paul Pry chuckled.

“I’m on my way out to see them. I want you to hold down the room. If any calls come in answer them. Don’t give out any information. Just get the numbers that call.”

Mugs Magoo looked puzzled.

“You expectin’ calls?”

“Yes.”

“Who from?”

“Newspapers.”

“What’ll they want to know?”

“That,” said Paul Pry, “depends upon various things.” And out he went, whistling cheerily.

Mugs Magoo groaned and settled down in the chair.

Paul Pry staged his entrance at the Goldcrest mansion when there was a slight lull in the excitement incident to newspaper interviews, flashlight photographs and police surveillance.

He rang the doorbell and smiled patronizingly at the young woman who answered it.

“Tell Mr. Goldcrest that George Crosby is here.”

The girl looked blank.

“He was expecting you?”

But there sounded swift steps thudding down the corridor and an avalanche of weight pushed her to one side.

“Come right in, Mr. Crosby, come right in. I’ve got awful bad news for you, awful bad. I got your wire a coupla hours ago, but, would you believe it, I ain’t got the diamonds.”

Paul Pry, assuming the name of George Crosby, and carrying himself with cordial dignity, clucked his sympathy.

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

The paunchy man with purple jowls and pop eyes regarded him with hands that waved shoulder high, palms outward.

“Serious? My wife is slugged, the necklace gone! Ain’t that serious? But come in, come on in and have a chair. Have a cigar, have a drink. Your wire said you were buyer for a private collector who didn’t want his name known. How’d you hear about the necklace?”

Paul Pry followed his host into an over-furnished living-room and dropped into the indicated chair.

“But this is dreadful!” he exclaimed.

“Sure it’s dreadful. A hundred thousand dollar necklace!”

Paul Pry’s eyes grew searching.

“Did you pay a hundred thousand for it?” he asked.

Rodney Goldcrest ran a pudgy forefinger around the inside of his moist shirt band.

“Well, of course, between the two of us, it wasn’t quite that much. But it was a big sum, an’ the wife likes to see her name in print, so I made it a hundred thousand even for the newspaper chaps.”

“And it’s gone?”

“Gone slick as a whistle, Mr. Crosby. And when I got your wire I knew it was a bad break all around. You know if some collector had paid a fancy price for the necklace, or had even offered a fancy price, it’d have given the wife a lot of publicity. The little woman likes to see her picture in the papers. An’ you know how it is with women. You gotta humour ’em.”

Paul Pry nodded slowly.

“Yes. I see. But this is a dreadful misfortune. The gems in that necklace came from a certain source which I will not divulge at the present time. But I believe my chief would have gone as high as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for them.

“You see, diamonds vary. That is due both to the gems as well as the manner in which they are cut and polished. Now there was a certain gem-cutter who achieved wonderful results with a diamond from a certain locality.

“I must naturally be vague about the details, Mr. Goldcrest, both to protect the name of my client as well as to prevent a sharp advance in the price of certain diamonds. But I can assure you that if it hadn’t been for this unfortunate robbery your wife would have had her picture in the rotogravure section of every society paper in the land. She would have been the proud possessor of a valuable bit of jewellery which would have branded her as a woman of taste and refinement.”

Goldcrest’s eyes glinted.

“That’s the line! That’s just what the little lady wants, taste an’ refinement. That’s the line she’s tryin’ to get across. You know it ain’t easy to crash into the better class of society right off the jump. We moved out here in this neighbourhood so it’d look right on our stationery, and we’ve gone to lots of trouble to do everything right. But we ain’t had much success.

“Not that I mind. It’s the little woman that I care about. She’s set her heart on it. The newspapers don’t give us the breaks. We keep the boys in cigars and whiskey, and keep ’em supplied with pictures, but they don’t use ’em.”

Paul Pry interrupted.

“It sure is tough. And especially since my chief is very prominent socially. However, there seems to be nothing that can be done about it. Please keep my telegram and my mission secret. I’m at the Bargemore Hotel if you get any trace of the gems. Don’t say a word to anyone, though.”

Goldcrest nodded.

“I can keep my mouth shut. But I want you to meet the little lady. She’s a bit shaken up, but she’ll be glad to see you. We talked a lot about your wire. You wait right here, and I’ll get her down right away.”

And Rodney Goldcrest heaved his great bulk from the chair and waddled in stately dignity from the room.

Five minutes and he was back, his face beaming.

On his arm was a matron who was as inclined to fleshiness as her husband. There was a welt over her left temple, but the undershot jaw and thick neck indicated that it would take more than one tap from a slungshot to disable her for any length of time.

Paul Pry knew that she had been a hostess in a speakeasy when her husband had started his meteoric rise to wealth. Now she strove to give an impression of culture.

“This here is the little woman herself,” said Goldcrest. “And this, my dear, is George Crosby, the gentleman that telegraphed he would be interested in making us a handsome offer on our necklace.”

The woman simpered. Paul Pry bowed low.

“It is indeed a pleasure and an honour, Mrs Goldcrest. One who has the excellent taste to pick up a bit of rare jewellery is to be congratulated. Your loss is doubly unfortunate. Had the necklace been what I suspect it was, your photograph would have been on the front page of the daily papers within forty-eight hours. You would have been hailed as a lady of discernment and refinement. If you had sold, your name would have been mentioned in connection with that of a most prominent and wealthy gem collector.”

The woman sighed, a sigh which rippled up the front of her dress like a miniature earthquake.

“Ain’t that tough,” she demanded. “That’s just the sort of a break I was hoping for.”

Paul Pry nodded.

“Well, something may turn up later. But you must promise me that you won’t say a word about my mission here, or give my name to the newspapers.”

“Sure, sure,” soothed Goldcrest, “we promise.”

But his wife was a little hesitant before she gave her promise.

“Yes, I guess so,” she said. “Only couldn’t we let it get out that you thought the necklace was a work of art and that I was a lady of taste and refinement?”

Paul Pry drew himself up in horror.

“No, no. My chief would dislike it very much if my mission here should be mentioned, now that the necklace is gone.”

“I see,” sighed Mrs Goldcrest.

Paul Pry bowed low, muttered conventional protestations of pleasure, retrieved his hat, stick and coat and withdrew.

As the door slammed, Goldcrest looked at his wife.

“Rodney,” she said in a voice that was filled with determination, “ring up the reporters an’ tell ’em to beat it out here. Tell ’em we got a story for ’em.”

Goldcrest lowered his eyes to the floor.

“We couldn’t very well give ’em the publicity on this gem collector, dearie,” he said.

The “little woman” tapped the floor with the ball of an impatient foot.

“Rodney,” she rasped, “don’t be foolish! Ring up those reporters!”

Paul Pry entered his room at the hotel and gazed at Mugs Magoo, sprawled on a chair, the telephone in his lap.

“Any calls?” asked Paul Pry.

“Nothing but.”

“Newspapers?”

“Yeah. They tried all the old gags. Wanted George Crosby.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“Give them any information?”

“Said you were out, didn’t know when you’d come back.”

“What did they ask?”

“What your business was, where you came from, how old you were, whether you were interested in purchasing the Goldcrest diamonds, whether you had any ideas for recovering the loot, whether it was true you’d put up a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars for the return of the diamonds, and a lot of other stuff I can’t remember.”

“They should be out here pretty quick.”

“They will be. Want me to stick around?”

“No. There’s a bottle of whiskey in that suitcase. Go on back to the apartment and wait until I give you a ring. A man didn’t show up with a desk, did he?”

“Huh, a desk? Say, I thought that was part of the gags the reporters were usin’. Sure. The porter said a desk had been delivered for you.”

“That,” said Paul Pry with a smile, “is different. Let’s have the desk sent up.”

It took precisely twenty minutes to get the desk trundled into the room. Paul Pry supervised the job of placing it to his satisfaction.

“What’s the big idea?” asked Mugs Magoo when the porters had gone.

“Had a cabinet maker working on it all afternoon,” said Paul Pry. “Watch.”

He grasped a corner of the desk, apparently a bit of solid wood, and pulled. The corner hinged upward and disclosed a secret drawer lying invitingly open.

“Good hiding place, eh?”

“Fine,” said Mugs Magoo, “but what’s it all about?”

Paul Pry placed his other hand beneath the desk and pushed. There was the sound of wood sliding on wood, and, before the startled eyes of Mugs Magoo, the secret drawer slid out of sight, and another secret drawer took its place.

“Well I’ll be hanged.”

Paul Pry only laughed. “You’ll probably be waylaid by some reporters as you go out. Send ’em up.”

Mugs Magoo nodded and left.

Five minutes later the reporters began to straggle into the room.

Paul Pry, under the name of George Crosby, secured wide publicity for his mission in town by insisting that the entire matter was a secret, and one that he did not care to discuss. He tried to be close-mouthed, but lost his temper and let certain admissions leak out. He threatened and cursed.

The result was that the morning papers contained the news that a well-known gem collector had his attention called to the Goldcrest diamonds and had been on the point of paying a cool quarter of a million dollars for them when the robbery had taken place.

The paper mentioned that the agent of this collector, one George Crosby, was registered in room 6345 at the Bargemore Hotel, that he was deeply mysterious about his mission to the city, but did not deny that the necklace had been desired by a prominent collector and that he had been commissioned to purchase it.

The same issue of the paper also contained a statement issued by Rodney Goldcrest that a ten thousand dollar reward would be paid for the return of the necklace, and no questions asked.

The police acted upon the assumption that the butler had not been as drunk as he had pretended, that he had had an accomplice, and that the accomplice had taken possession of the necklace.

Paul Pry read the various papers as he breakfasted in his room. A smile of serene satisfaction was on his face.

At ten-thirty his telephone rang. “This Mr. George Crosby?” asked a cautious voice.

“This is Mr. George Crosby,” affirmed Paul Pry.

“You won’t know my name, but I’d like to see you on a business matter.”

“When?”

“Soon as possible.”

“What was the name?”

“Simms, Sidney Simms.”

“Never heard of you.”

“You wouldn’t have, but it’ll be to your advantage to talk with me.”

“Very well,” said Paul Pry, after the manner of one reaching a decision on impulse, “I shall expect you in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s O.K.,” said the other man, and slid the receiver back on its hook.

He was punctilious in his appointment. Fifteen minutes later to the second there sounded a furtive knock at Paul Pry’s door.

Paul Pry flung it open.

“Mr. Simms?”

“Yeah. This is George Crosby, huh? Pleased t’ meetcha.”

And Sidney Simms glided into the room, much after the manner in which a snake glides down a rat hole.

He was tall and slender, this Sidney Simms, and he had great bat ears and bulging eyes. His huge mouth was twisted in a smile, and he wriggled his slender neck about in his collar.

“You had some business with me?” asked Paul Pry.

“Yeah. You’re the chap that’s the expert on gems, huh?”

“Not exactly an expert. I am interested in certain types of stones.”

“Yeah. I know. Well, I’ve got a couple of diamonds I’d like to have you look over.”

“But my dear man,” protested Paul Pry, “I’m not in the business of appraising gems. My judgment might be utterly valueless. I would suggest that you step down to one of the wholesale jewellers.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” hissed Sidney Simms in his peculiar half whisper, “but just take a look at these babies!”

He rolled two diamonds out on the desk.

Paul Pry contemplated the gems with a face which registered intense interest.

“Very pleasing,” he said, “very pleasing indeed, and quite interesting.”

He reached for the stones.

Sidney Simms watched him with protruding eyes that had suddenly gone cold.

Paul Pry studied the stones.

“These,” he announced at length, “have been in settings and then pried out.”

Sidney Simms husked his answer in a cautious voice.

“That don’t hurt ’em,” he said.

Paul Pry nodded.

“Quite correct. However, the stones are not ones in which I would be interested. They are very ordinary diamonds of good quality. There is nothing distinctive in either gem or workmanship. My own interest is that of a collector. But thank you for coming.”

Sidney Simms nodded, but made no other motion.

“You came on here to get the Goldcrest diamonds, eh?”

“That,” said Paul Pry with dignity, “is, of course, a private matter.”

“I was only going by what the newspapers said.”

“The newspapers have assumed entirely too much liberty.”

Sidney Simms leaned forward.

“S’pose you could get the Goldcrest diamonds.”

Paul Pry sat back at his desk and put the tips of his fingers together.

“Now,” he said, “I am interested.”

“Yes,” remarked Simms, his bat ears wriggling, “you should be.”

Paul Pry said nothing.

“Suppose,” went on Simms, “we go back to these two diamonds I’m showing you.”

“What?” asked Paul Pry, “would you take for them?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Apiece?”

“For both.”

“That,” said Paul Pry, “is approximately one half of their wholesale cost. It is either too much or too little.”

Simms sat on the edge of a chair and thrust forward his long neck. The manoeuvre seemed to accentuate his bat ears and goggle eyes.

“Meaning what?” he demanded.

Paul Pry got up and went to the door. He flung it open, looked up and down the corridor. Then he closed and locked the door. He went to the windows, saw that each was tightly closed. Then he returned to his visitor.

“If the goods are legitimate, the price is too low. If they are hot the price is too high.”

“Well,” demanded Simms, upon whom no detail of the motions to insure secrecy had been lost, “s’pose they are hot. What then?”

“One hundred dollars,” said Paul Pry with a snap to his words.

“They’d retail for close to a thousand,” whined Simms.

“One hundred dollars. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it.”

Paul Pry leaned forward. Before the goggle eyes of Sidney Simms, he pulled up the section of desk top, revealing the secret drawer. That secret drawer was crammed with rolled bank notes.

Paul Pry took out two fifty-dollar bills and flipped them over, gathered in the two diamonds, dropped them carelessly in the drawer and replaced the desk top.

The goggle eyes took in every move.

“Pretty slick,” said Simms.

“Yes. It’s very well constructed.”

“Listen, those diamonds are awful hot.”

“I don’t give a damn how hot they are.”

Simms beamed at his host. “I guess,” he observed, “we understand each other pretty well.”

Paul Pry became all business.

“Those Goldcrest diamonds are worth precisely one hundred thousand dollars to me — in cash.”

“Aw, the paper says they’re worth two hundred and fifty thousand from a collector’s standpoint—”

“And only worth that hundred thousand to me if they are of the finish and workmanship I have been led to believe.”

Sidney Simms fidgeted.

“When could I talk with you?”

“At eight o’clock tonight.”

“All right. I’ll talk with you some more. I won’t bring the diamonds, though. But I’ll see some of the others and see what I can do.”

Paul Pry got to his feet, held the outer door open.

“There will be one hundred thousand dollars in cold cash available in this room at precisely eight o’clock tonight. And I never wait more than five minutes on an appointment. Goodbye, Mr. Simms.”

And Sidney Simms wriggled through the door of the room, into the corridor.

“I’ll be there,” he husked.

What followed was simple. Paul Pry dropped down to the lobby and engaged a white-whiskered gentleman in conversation. The conversation turned to prohibition, whiskey. Paul Pry mentioned casually that he had a shipment of pre-war stuff which he had been fortunate enough to secure from sources of unquestionable integrity. The whiskey was smooth as oil.

The white-whiskered gentleman became greatly interested. He wished very, very much that he could secure some of this same shipment.

Paul Pry took out a notebook, quoted a price, jotted down a figure.

“The name’s George Crosby,” he said. “Be at room 6345 at precisely three minutes past eight tonight. I won’t get the stuff ready for delivery until eight. My partner is calling on me.”

The white-whiskered gentleman mumbled his thanks.

Paul Pry noticed that a square-toed man with a bull neck had seemed rather interested in the conversation, particularly after he took out his notebook.

He moved to another part of the lobby, engaged a slender man with mournful eyes in conversation. The conversation turned to prohibition and the terrible quality of recent whiskey. From that point on the conversation was the same as the other.

The bull-necked man with the square-toed shoes became exceedingly interested when Paul Pry made another notation in his notebook and moved away.

He sat down next to a horse-faced man who was absorbed in a newspaper and borrowed a match. The horse-faced one looked up, gave the match, made some comment. The comment started a conversation. The conversation turned to prohibition and the quality of whiskey.

At the close of the conversation, Paul Pry snapped his notebook back into his pocket and walked out to the street, gazed up and down, and entered a cab.

He was gone for several hours. When he returned, the bell captain found occasion to brush against him.

“I’ve got the house,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Paul Pry, speaking, however, in a carefully lowered tone.

“You know what I mean. If you do anything in the house get your stuff through me.”

Paul Pry appeared to consider.

“You,” he said, “can go to hell.” And he walked off.

At precisely three minutes to eight a delivery truck drove up to the freight entrance and the porter receipted for several bulky packages for George Crosby, in room 6345.

The porter’s palm had been well greased, and the bulky packages came up. They were placed in the room, the placing being accomplished with great care.

At eight one Sidney Simms wriggled through the door.

“Well?” he asked. His goggle eyes lit on the packages.

Paul Pry walked over to the desk. “A little shipment,” he said.

There came a banging on the door panel. Paul Pry frowned. Sidney Simms darted a hand under his coat.

“Open in the name of the law!” boomed a voice.

Paul Pry gave a gasp, muttered an oath and reached the door with swift strides.

Sidney Simms hesitated for a mere fraction of a second. Then, as Paul Pry’s back was turned, he lifted the top of the desk, disclosing the secret drawer, now crammed full of rolled currency, and dropped in a diamond necklace that glittered with sparkling brilliancy as it dropped into the secret drawer. He put back the desk top and was standing well away from the desk when the officers entered.

“What in hell’s the meaning of this outrage?” demanded Paul Pry.

“You know, George Crosby,” boomed one of the officers. “You have in your possession a large quantity of illegal liquor.”

“Oh,” said Paul Pry, and seemed relieved.

And Sidney Simms, standing with folded arms, the tips of his fingers touching the butts of twin automatics, heaved a sigh and grinned.

“What’s in those boxes?” asked the officer.

Paul Pry shrugged his shoulders.

“I haven’t opened them.”

“Well, I will,” snorted the officer in charge.

They opened the boxes in a most thorough manner. The boxes were filled with bottles. The bottles bore whiskey labels and were filled with an amber liquid.

“Guess we’ve got you dead to rights,” said the officer. “Who are you?” he demanded, turning to Sidney Simms.

“Why this guy met me on the street and got to talking about some fine liquor he had. I don’t even know his name. He said for me to come on up and he’d give me a sample. Here, officer, here’s my card. Maybe you’d better know who I am.”

The officer moved toward Simms belligerently.

“You bet I’d better know who you are!”

Simms led the way to a corner and whispered. The officer grunted his surprise, and inspected certain documents which Sidney Simms took from an inner pocket. Those documents were clearly convincing. He nodded his head.

“O.K., men,” he said.

One of the raiders had opened one of the bottles.

“Hell,” he said. “This here is nothing but coloured water!”

The chief crossed the room with quick strides.

“What!”

“It’s a fact!”

And during that interval of excitement, Paul Pry managed to unobtrusively work the slide which switched the location of the secret drawers in the desk.

There was the sound of wood sliding over wood, a click as something dropped into place. But those sounds were swallowed in the exclamations of the raiding officers.

“It’s no crime to have coloured water in your possession, is it, officer?” asked Paul Pry, and winked at Simms.

The officer emitted a roar.

“No. But it’s a crime to try and sell it, and that’s what you were doing!”

“In that event,” suggested Paul Pry, “you should have waited in the hall until I had sold the water and taken money for it. Your raid was predicated on the theory of possession, I believe.”

The officer in charge straightened, clenched his fists, surveyed Paul Pry with a face that was mottled in anger.

“It’s a damned lucky break for you,” he said. “You bought this stuff thinking it was good whiskey. You got gypped on the whiskey, but you got saved a stiff fine and a jail sentence on the strength of it.”

Paul Pry shrugged his shoulders.

“Says you,” he retorted impudently.

“Says me,” bellowed the officer, “and you’re going down to the station with us and do some explaining. That wisecrack of yours is going to cost you a ride in a police wagon, and a charge of vagrancy and a chance to make bail!”

He moved toward Paul Pry with slow, purposeful steps.

“And I hope you resist an officer,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

But Paul Pry held out docile wrists.

“I’m sorry, officer,” he said.

“You will be,” snapped the head of the raiding party.

“Want this evidence, chief?”

“Yes. Bring along a couple of bottles from each case. Turn out the lights and let’s go.”

And in the confusion incident to departure, Sidney Simms managed to leave his hat. It was not until the door was locked that he remembered it.

“I left my hat,” he whispered to the raiding officer.

That individual passed over the key.

“All right, make it snappy.”

Sidney Simms made it snappy.

He glided to the door, unlocked it, wriggled into the room, scooped up his hat with one gesture, and flipped up the section of desk top with another.

He fished out a string of glittering objects, dropped them into his pocket. Then he scooped out the rolls of currency, chuckling the while.

“Just too bad,” he muttered. “Crosby gets skinned all around.”

He dropped the section back over the drawer, walked to the door, wriggled through it and turned the key. He met the raiders at the elevator. He left them at the lobby.

At the entrance to the hotel, a police car was parked. About it a curious crowd was gathered.

“Officer,” begged Paul Pry, “will you let me explain this matter? You’re letting a criminal get away—”

“Shut up!” snapped the officer.

Paul Pry meekly subsided. He was hustled through the swinging doors, out to the sidewalk. The door of the police car opened to receive him, and then a gruff voice from the sidewalk halted all proceedings.

“Here, what’s this?”

The raiders turned to confront Inspector Quigley.

“Booze raid,” said the officer in charge, saluting.

“Why, look here, this man is Paul Pry. He had an appointment with me to recover the Goldcrest necklace. There’s some mistake—”

Paul Pry’s voice cut through the sudden silence.

“Not at all, inspector. I tried to explain to this man, but he wouldn’t listen. I told him he was letting a criminal escape, but—”

The raider ran a nervous finger about the neckband of his collar.

“Come inside!” roared Inspector Quigley.

Back in Paul’s room, Paul seemed apologetic.

“Of course I couldn’t say anything in front of the criminal or he’d have started to shoot his way out, and I wasn’t absolutely certain he had the necklace. But perhaps, inspector, if you’ll get these bungling officers out of here we might recover the necklace, even if we have lost the real criminal.”

Quigley frowned at the open-mouthed men.

“Get out,” he said. They got out. Paul Pry approached the desk, flipped up the section of the top. A drawer was disclosed, a drawer that was empty, stripped of its contents as clean as a whistle.

“Humph!” said Inspector Quigley.

Paul Pry reached under the top of the desk and pulled a lever. The empty drawer slid smoothly along greased skids with just a faint sound of wood rubbing against wood. Another drawer clicked into place. That drawer was filled with money and, on top of the rolled currency, was a string of glittering objects that caught the light of the room and sent forth scintillations of brilliant fire.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Inspector Quigley, picking up the diamonds. “I’ll be damned.”

He looked at them carefully.

“It’s the string all right. Pry, there’s something funny about this.”

“Is there?”

“You know damned well there is. This necklace would have brought them about twenty thousand if they peddled it to a fence. It cost eighty thousand at retail. And I find it here where you apparently talked some criminal into leaving it.”

“Tricked some criminal into leaving it, inspector.”

“Well?”

“Well, inspector, there’s a reward of ten thousand dollars for the recovery of that necklace. I’m not a hog. You take the necklace and the credit. You take half the reward. I take the other half.”

Inspector Quigley sat down on the edge of the desk.

“You know, Pry, there’s just a chance you were mixed in this thing. This is the third or fourth big reward you’ve recovered. Better come clean.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“Sure,” he said.

And, Paul Pry told the entire story from the time he found Gilvray’s man shadowing the butler.

“But,” muttered Inspector Quigley, when Paul had finished his story, “we can’t get a conviction purely on your testimony, especially since you posed as an accomplice.”

Paul Pry shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

“We can get five thousand dollars reward money apiece, inspector. And I’m just as glad we can’t pin anything on the Gilvray gang.”

“Why?”

“They’re my meal ticket, the goose that lays my golden eggs.”

Inspector Quigley sighed.

“You,” he said, “will be pushing up daisies if you keep on.”

Paul Pry merely laughed.

The newspapers made much of the recovery of the Goldcrest diamonds. There was, it seemed, a great deal of credit due to Inspector Quigley. Also there was credit in an undisclosed amount due to an amateur who had posed as George Crosby, a gem collector, and trapped the criminals into dealing with him.

Unfortunately, the criminals had escaped, but the police expected to make arrests. The reward money would be paid. The necklace had been recovered.

Paul Pry read the papers and chuckled. Mugs Magoo read them and grunted. Inspector Quigley read them and a satisfied smile oozed from the corners of his mouth. At his palatial residence in the exclusive suburban district, Benjamin Franklin Gilvray, known in the underworld as Big Front Gilvray, read the papers and cursed.

Upon the table in front of him reposed one paste imitation necklace, five rolls of bills. Each roll of bills was backed by a fifty-dollar bank note. The interior of each roll consisted of fifty one-dollar bills. The total was the exact amount Big Front Gilvray’s gang had to divide as the result of a carefully planned coup.

Big Front Gilvray drew a piece of paper to him. Using his left hand, a coarse pencil, and printing the words so they would not betray him, he wrote a message to Paul Pry. The message read:

Big Front Gilvray summoned a member of his gang.

“See that this gets slipped under the door of this guy Pry’s apartment,” he said. “We’ll give him a chance to get out of town.”

The gangster’s face distorted with rage.

“You just say the word, boss, and we’ll put him on the spot and—”

“No,” said Big Front Gilvray. “We’ve always avoided the rough stuff, and we’ll give this guy a break. But it’s a temptation to ventilate him with a Tommy. Think of all the trouble we went to!”

The other man’s face purpled.

“God yes! We took moving pictures of the damned butler so we could study his every gesture. We had Delano strutting around the streets copying his walk. We had to plant Mabel in the house to slip the drug in the cocktail. We had to—”

“Shut up!” snapped Gilvray. “Get started.”

The subordinate choked off his words and got started.

Precisely two hours later a collect telegram came for B F Gilvray. Thinking it related to some of his numerous liquor shipments, the arch-gangster paid the toll, receipted for the telegram and slitted the yellow envelope.

His incredulous eyes read the answer to his anonymous note.