The Adventures of Paul Pry

Against gangdom’s slickest pair “Mugs” Magoo had warned him, yet deliberately Paul Pry had laid his plans. Did he have nine lives, nine charmed lives that he dared disregard all warning — dared overstep hell’s danger signal unafraid?

1

Paul Pry noticed that the street seemed strangely deserted, and attributed the fact to a mere temporary lull in traffic.

He glanced at the opposite sidewalk where “Mugs” Magoo, ex-camera-eye man for the metropolitan police, was crouched against the wall of a bank building.

Mugs Magoo was waving his hand in a series of slow circles. That was the signal of danger — the danger sign that Paul Pry had instructed his lieutenant was to be used only in the event circumstances necessitated a hasty retreat.

It would, of course, have been the part of wisdom to have heeded that signal, for Mugs Magoo knew the underworld as perhaps no other living mortal. For years he had been on the force, merely tabulating crooks, filing their faces away in that card-index memory of his. Then a political upheaval had lost him his job; an accident had lost him his right arm at the shoulder; and, he had become a drifter.

Right at present he was taking the part of a cripple, selling pencils. His hat, half filled with pencils, and with just a few coins in the bottom, was balanced on the palm of his left hand. His face was covered with a two days’ growth of greyish stubble, and his glassy eyes seemed utterly uninterested in life.

But, as a matter of fact, Mugs Magoo catalogued the underworld as it flowed past, on the side street that was to the gangster what Wall Street was to the financier. And Mugs’ hand, making signals with the hat, checked off the gangsters as they passed and relayed the information to Paul Pry.

The danger signals increased in intensity.

But Paul Pry was curious. His eyes were diamond hard, and there was a taut alertness about his well-knit figure that showed he had seen and interpreted the signal. Otherwise he might have been merely a well-dressed lounger, idling away the late evening on the city’s streets.

A big car rolled around the corner, purred smoothly to the kerb, on the same side as that occupied by Paul Pry. The door opened, and a woman stepped to the pavement.

Paul Pry made his living by his wits. He loved excitement, and he had no mental perspective when it came to courting danger. Lately he had made his money, and a very great deal of money, through the simple process of shaking down gangsters, matching his wits against their brute force.

And Paul Pry had learned from bitter experience that gangsters are very resentful indeed, and wont to show their resentment with pellets which are belched from a machine gun. He had also learned that beautiful women are, by very virtue of their beauty, likely to prove exceedingly false and dangerous.

But none of those facts dimmed in the least Paul Pry’s appreciation of beauty. Nor did the danger curb his unique activities. So far, his agile wits had always kept him at least one jump ahead of those gangsters who wanted to remove him from the trials and tribulations of an unkind, but very interesting world.

This woman was particularly beautiful. But her beauty had a suggestion of smooth hardness about it, like the polished surface of a diamond. She was clad in evening gown and a white fur coat that should have made her seem like a pure snowflake. In reality, she resembled an icicle, glitteringly hard and utterly cold, despite the beautiful figure, the graceful curve of the chin, and the profile which might have been chiselled from the finest marble by the most skilled artist.

Paul Pry let his eyes slither over to the shadows across the street where Mugs Magoo crouched in watchful waiting.

Mugs had ceased to move his hat. The danger sign was discontinued. Either the danger had passed, or else it was too late for a warning to do any good.

The woman stared at Paul Pry, and there was nothing of virginal innocence in that stare. On the other hand, it was not the stare of one who wishes to make an acquaintance. It was merely that she wished to look at Paul Pry for reasons of her own, and she looked at him without seeking to disguise the fact.

The woman was hardly the type to drive an automobile. Her expensive clothes, the pride of her bearing, created an impression of surroundings that should have included a liveried chauffeur, a big limousine, an expensive apartment.

Yet she had been the one who had piloted the car, and the car was not a limousine. It was big and powerful, but was an open touring car with side curtains, partially concealing the back.

The woman’s eyes glittered over the face of Paul Pry. Then she relaxed. A certain tension which had held her rigid seemed to have dissolved. The look of hardness vanished from her face. She became a creature of softly seductive curves, of ravishing beauty, and she moved toward the door which was at the rear of the touring car with the grace of a professional dancer crossing the stage.

Her arm shot out. The gloved hand opened the door. The interior of the car seemed empty.

“O.K., Bill,” she said.

The plush robe on the floor of the car stirred into life. A casual observer would, perhaps, have expected some huge dog to answer the call and emerge from beneath the lap robe.

But it was no dog that shook off the folds of the robe and came out into the tang of the night air.

It was a man.

The man wore evening clothes. Someone had smashed a terrific blow on his nose; the eyes were swollen; the front of the starched shirt and the waistcoat showed plainly the stains of crimson which had spouted from the nose.

The coat was ripped. A pocket had been literally torn out, and was dangling from the threads which bound the bottom of the pocket to the coat. One of the silk lapels was ripped half away. There was no hat. The hair was matted, and the swollen nose made breathing through the mouth a necessity.

He was undignified as he crawled out of the shelter of the robe, staggered to the pavement. The woman extended a solicitous hand to his arm.

What followed came with that overlapping swiftness of events which is as impossible to follow in detail as the well-organized offensive of a well-drilled football team, sweeping down the field in a bewildering change of positions, executed at top speed.

Doorways opened, and men came out of the darkness, running low. The street lights glinted from the steel weapons. Yet no shots were fired.

One of the men swung a swift arm, and the blackjack “kerthunked” on the matted hair of the individual who had already seen such rough usage.

Another man jumped behind him, was ready to receive the unconscious form as it slumped backward and down.

Another swung a vicious blackjack at the woman’s head. She, too, would have been unconscious but for one thing, and that one thing was Paul Pry.

Paul Pry carried a cane, which, to the casual eye, was merely a polished bit of wood. Only the trained observer would have noticed that that which seemed to be wood was not wood at all, but steel painted to resemble polished wood. That steel was very thin, and furnished the sheath for a tempered blade of finest steel which was attached to the handle of the cane.

It was, in the hands of a trained fencer, a highly efficient weapon, and Paul Pry was adept in its use. His right hand jerked out the naked steel of the blade.

The lights glinted from it as it darted forward, as smoothly rapid as the tongue of a snake. The man who was swinging the blackjack at the woman’s skull jumped back with a scream. The cold steel had flicked out and bit deep into the shoulder muscles. The swinging arm was deflected, and the blackjack whizzed down in a harmless swing.

A car came around the corner, driven in second gear, the tortured tyres shrieking their protest as they skidded over the pavement. Two men turned with oaths to Paul Pry.

But there were no shots fired. For some reason, the assailants seemed to require absolute silence so far as their operations were concerned. It was an affair of steel and blackjacks. The glittering knives swept in wicked thrusts, and the men swung their blackjacks. But Paul Pry, standing with his left arm thrown about the woman, holding her closely to him, swung his blade in a flickering arc of deadly speed.

The steel flecked in and out forming a barrier of perfect defence, biting once in a while into the bodies of the attackers.

The woman swung. Her right hand came out from beneath the fur of the coat. There was a pearl-handled, nickelled automatic smuggled in the palm.

“I’ll shoot, you rats!” she blazed.

The defence was too strong. The attackers jumped back. There was a muffled command.

“He’s in the car,” said someone.

“O.K., boys,” rasped a voice. “Leave the—”

And the epithet which he used to describe the woman was one which was usually reserved for masculine ears.

The woman broke away from Paul Pry’s grasp.

“Give him back! Give him back!” she screamed.

But the figures, still moving with well-disciplined efficiency of motion, had jumped into the purring automobile which had dashed to the kerb. Doors slammed. The woman’s gun blazed.

The shot might have been a signal. It finished the deadly silence of the attack.

The car was ripping into grinding motion. The back wheels half spun as the power was kicked into the drive. The car seemed to jump forward, half stop, jump again.

And there were little pinpricks of fire which leaped from the darkness of that car. The street echoed to the rattle of bullets. Paul Pry felt one whip past his cheek, felt something jerk the hat from his head, heard the rattle of a leaden hail against the side of the building behind him. Then the car was away, and the firing ceased.

The woman’s face was deathly white. Her crimsoned lips were wide as she stared with bulging eyes at the departing car. And then her mouth spewed curses.

Paul Pry touched her arm. “The police,” he suggested.

The words affected her as would an electric shock. She jumped forward, toward the car she had driven up. One arm flung up the coat, the skirt, disclosing her shapely legs, the other pitched the weapon she had held into the back of the car, pulled open the door catch.

She raised her legs over the gear shift, slammed the feet down on the brake and clutch pedals, and she did it all with a swift efficiency, a lack of lost motion, which indicated perfect muscular co-ordination.

Her manner was that of one who is accustomed to swift decisions and rapid execution of those decisions. And Paul Pry, curious, sensing an opportunity to exercise his unusual talents, moving with an efficiency every whit as swiftly purposeful as that of the young woman, leaped into the seat beside her and slammed the door.

The gears were meshing by the time the door catch banged into place. Paul Pry turned his head toward the opposite side of the street as the car lurched into motion.

Mugs Magoo was crouched as he had been before the swift battle. His hat was moving in a series of circles. The danger sign. And then the car, swinging for the corner, lost Mugs Magoo from Paul Pry’s vision.

2

The woman sent the car into hurtling speed, quested the side street, prowled about the main boulevard, and finally was forced to face the facts. She had lost the car ahead.

She slowed, turned a drawn, haggard face to Paul Pry. “He’s gone!” she said.

Her voice held a note of despair, an utter hopelessness which indicated that something of the utmost importance had gone from her life.

Paul Pry nodded, his ears attuned to the throbbing of a police siren which was growing in intensity with a rapidity which betokened high speed on the part of the police car.

“I don’t know how you feel about the police,” he said. “But, as far as I’m concerned—”

And his shoulders shrugged expressively as he jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the shrieking siren which was now drawing uncomfortably close.

The woman acted as though she had heard that siren for the first time, and her reactions were characteristically swift. She floorboarded the throttle, and the car leaped forward like a startled deer.

Paul Pry noticed that she was an expert driver as the car swung into the side street, tilted, skidded, straightened as the whirling rubber bit into the pavement, and then they went places in a hurry.

By the time the woman took her foot off the throttle for a moment, and pressed hard on the brake as a bit of traffic loomed ahead, the sound of the siren had become inaudible to Paul Pry’s ears. The police car had probably gone first to the scene of the shooting.

Paul Pry grinned at the girl as the traffic signal straightened out enough to give a way through, and the young woman sent the car through that hole in the traffic like a skimming trout, snaking through an opening in some submerged logs to head for the shady shelter under an overhanging bank.

“Can I be of any assistance?” he asked.

She shook her head, and, unlike many drivers of her sex, did not turn her head as she addressed him, but kept her eyes glued to the road.

“I guess not. But you can come with me while I pour a jolt of gin into my system. God knows I need it!”

Paul Pry settled back on the cushions.

“O.K. by me,” he murmured.

The car made several corners. The woman started glancing about her, swung the car in a figure eight around a space of four blocks, making certain that no one was following. Then she slammed on the brakes, switched off the lights, twisted the steering wheel, and sent the car slamming up a private driveway, midway in the block. The open doors of a narrow garage yawned ahead. The woman sent the car through those doors, skidded the tyres on the floor of the garage just when it seemed she would crash out the rear end of the structure, and jumped to the floor, heedless of the expensive fur coat which flapped against greasy objects, scraped dusty wheel hubs.

She was tugging at the door of the garage, getting it closed, and she apparently had no idea that Paul Pry would help her. Evidently she had been trained in self-sufficiency and did not expect those little masculine courtesies which are so priceless to most women of youth, beauty and expensive clothes.

Paul Pry gave her a hand. The door slammed into place, and a spring lock clicked.

“We go out the other way,” said the woman.

She crossed the garage, groped for a door, opened it, and stood for a moment outlined against the illumination of a courtyard, listening, peering.

Then she nodded, beckoned, and stepped out upon the cement. There was a flight of stairs, a door.

Paul Pry followed her through that door and found himself in the carpeted corridor of an apartment house. They went up a flight of stairs to a second corridor, then up another flight to the third floor. The stairs were broad and carpeted with a thickness of cushioned cloth which made them absolutely silent. The illumination was not too brilliant.

The front of the apartment showed at the end of the corridor, opening upon another street, well lit. The woman’s room was at the back, near those broad, well-carpeted stairs.

She paused, fitted a latchkey to the lock, then stepped back. Her keys clinked in the pocket of the coat. The right hand was concealed beneath the glistening fur of the garment. She turned the knob with her left hand, flung open the door, waited a moment, then switched on the light.

Paul Pry noticed that she had retrieved the gun from the back seat of her car, and he had no doubt as to what her right hand held beneath the concealment of the fur coat. But the woman made no effort to draw back out of the line of possible fire, or to have Paul Pry enter the apartment first. She was self-reliant, and she had been trained in the hard school of life that teaches its pupils to take things as they come.

The lights showed an apartment, well furnished, luxurious. The soft lighting glowed invitingly upon deep chairs, upon massive tables, soft couches and rich tapestries. There was an odour of stale incense in the air, and the ashtrays which were on the table were filled with cigarette ashes and cigarette butts. Aside from that, the place was an example of neat housekeeping.

She walked, cat-footed, into the apartment.

“Close the door,” she said to Paul Pry, flinging the words over her shoulder without turning her head, and walking toward a door which evidently opened into a bedroom.

Here she did the same thing she had done at the door of the apartment — flinging open the door with her left hand, the right still being concealed beneath the fur coat. The bedroom was not as neat as the parlour had been. Paul Pry caught glimpses of sheer silks strewn over the bed, pink fluffy garments that were on chairs.

The woman entered the room, pulled open the door of the closet, looked in it, looked under the bed. Then she walked out, went to the kitchen, kicked open the swinging door and stepped into the room. She clicked on the light switch and thrust the gun which her right hand had held, into some receptacle which had been tailored for it in the front of her dress, well out of sight. Then she sighed — turned to Paul Pry.

“Open the ice box and get some ice and a lemon. I’ve got some gin, and I’ll get some glasses. I’m all in. How do you feel?”

“Like a million,” said Paul Pry.

She nodded casually.

“You would,” she said, and took some glasses from the little cupboard over the sink, sat them on the tiled drain board. Paul Pry opened the ice box, took out a tray of ice. He noticed that the ice box was filled with bottled goods, but that there was no trace of food in it. Evidently this woman was not strong on cooking.

The drink was mixed. They clinked glasses.

“I haven’t thanked you for stopping that swing that was headed for my head — not yet,” she said.

Paul Pry touched his lips to the glass.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

She drained her drink in three throaty gulps, tilting back her neck, drinking with a frankness that discounted all ladylike sips of the beverage, in favour of getting it down where it would do the most good.

She sighed and reached for the bottle.

“Don’t be polite,” she said. “I’ll be one up on you in a minute.”

She fixed herself a second drink. Paul Pry’s glass was still half-filled as she inclined her glass to touch the brim of his for the second time.

“Here’s how,” she said.

She disposed of this drink more slowly.

“Well,” she observed, “let’s have another one and go into the other room, and have a cigarette with it.”

Paul Pry held the bottom of his glass up and drained the last of the drink.

“O.K.,” he observed.

She mixed the third, and then led the way into the living-room, dropped in a chair. Her fur coat was open, hanging down on either side. She propped her feet up on a vacant chair.

“Happy days,” said Paul Pry.

“Here’s mud in your eye. Got a match?”

Paul Pry lit her cigarette, stared pensively for a moment, and sighed again.

“I love my friends, and hate my enemies,” she said.

“Meaning?” asked Paul Pry.

She turned glitteringly dangerous eyes on him.

“Meaning that I hate a snivelling hypocrite,” she said, “and meaning that you’re a total stranger to me.”

“I don’t get the connection,” said Paul Pry.

Her cheeks had colour now, and the eyes held a moist glitter which came from the alcohol of the first two drinks.

“Meaning that if anything happened and I had to choose between a friend and a total stranger, I’d stick by the friend!” she snapped.

Paul Pry nodded. “You can’t be blamed for that.”

“Don’t blame me, then.”

“I’m not.”

“Maybe you will.”

“Perhaps.”

There was silence for a moment.

“But,” said Paul Pry, his eyes lazily regarding the smoke which curled upward from his cigarette, “it must be quite a privilege to be a friend of yours.”

“It is,” she agreed. There was a dreamy, reminiscent light in her eyes, as she added softly, after a moment, “And how!”

Paul Pry grinned.

“And highly inconvenient to be an enemy of yours.”

The lips straightened.

“You said something!” she replied, and her words were as close-clipped as bullets.

“How does one get to be your friend? Would saving your life do the trick?”

She regarded him with sober, appraising eyes.

“Well—” she hesitated.

“Well what?”

“I’m not ungrateful,” she said, slowly, “but I’m just telling you, no matter what happens, a total stranger don’t stack with an old friend. You remember that, no matter what else comes up between us, and then I won’t feel like a damned hypocrite if I should have to sacrifice you for a friend.”

Paul Pry laughed lightly.

“Baby,” he said, “I like your style.”

The remark added nothing to the colour of her cheeks or to the warmth of her eyes.

“Most men do,” she agreed.

“Now,” said Paul Pry, “tell me what it was all about.”

She drew a deep breath, drained off the last of the drink in the glass, and muttered something that might have been a single explosive epithet.

“You would have to ask that,” she observed, and it was as though she had picked up a switch to punish a friendly dog for some infraction of discipline, so far as her manner and tone were concerned.

Paul Pry’s own eyes became just a trifle diamond hard but they remained appreciative.

“The man that was with me,” she said, slowly, “was my brother.”

Paul Pry nodded, and there was approval in his nod.

“I thought he would be,” he said tonelessly.

The young woman snapped him a suddenly questing look, but Paul Pry’s face was a mask.

“Yes,” she said, “an only brother.”

“What did they want him for?”

“God knows. They tried to grab him off earlier in the evening. They smashed his nose. There was a doctor where we stopped the car. He was a friend of ours. They evidently figured we’d be coming there for medical attention, and they got there first and stuck around in the shadows, waiting for us to show up.

“I rather had a hunch there might be some trouble there, which is why I got out and looked things over. I s’pose you noticed me giving you the once-over.”

Paul Pry nodded.

“And what will they do with him? Take him for a ride?”

She winced at that, kicked her feet down from the chair without answering the question. She went to the door of the kitchen.

“I’m going to have another drink.”

“Count me out,” said Paul Pry.

She stared moodily at him, regarding the hand that held the smoking cigarette between the fingers, noticing the steady wisps of smoke which went spiralling upward. There was no sign of tremor in the hand.

“You sure got nerves!” she said, and there was genuine admiration in her tone. “I wish,” she went on, “that you wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what?” asked Paul Pry.

“A total stranger,” she said.

“Oh, well, it’s not a permanent relationship,” he observed.

She nodded gloomily.

“I’ve just got a hunch,” she said, and stopped to regard him with pursed lips and meditative eyes. “Did you see the faces of any of those men?”

Paul Pry saw no particular reason for being truthful.

“No,” he observed. “As one total stranger to another, I can tell you that I did not. I was too excited.”

She laughed, a harsh, bitter laugh.

“You’ve been places!” she said. And then she added an afterthought. “Let’s hope you don’t have things done to you,” she observed, and went into the kitchen to mix the other drink.

3

There sounded a whirring of an electric door device. The girl came out of the kitchen in two swift strides. Her skin matched her fur coat in colour. Her right hand was once more beneath the folds of the garment.

“Got a gun?” she asked of Paul Pry, and her tone while taut with emotion, was as casual as when she had asked him if he had a match.

“I could find one if I had to,” said Paul Pry.

“You may have to,” she said and strode to the door.

She flung it open.

“I’ll take it standing up, whatever it is,” she said, before she had seen what was in the corridor.

A young boy came forward. He was in the uniform of a messenger service, and he held forward an addressed envelope.

“Miss Lola Beeker?” he asked.

The girl extended her left hand.

“You guessed it, sonny.”

His eyes took in her beauty with that breathless reverence which immaturity has for a beautiful woman, when eyes are just awakening to grace of form and face, and experience has not learned to tell that beauty of figure is, after all, but beauty of figure.

“Gee!” he said, and handed her the envelope, his wide eyes still on her face. “You don’t need to give me no tip, lady. It’s a pleasure!”

She ignored the breathless appreciation of her beauty with a disregard which showed she accepted such homage as a matter of course. She rewarded the boy with a smile and a pat of the hand. Paul Pry’s eyes noticed the mechanical nature of the smile, the casual carelessness of the pat. The boy noticed neither.

He was still standing, wide-eyed, when the girl gently closed the door and ripped the edge off of the envelope with a hand that trembled.

She pulled out a folded bit of paper and read a typewritten message. Her eyes were brilliant and hard. Her breast rose and fell with the strain of her heavy breathing.

She folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope. She looked at Paul Pry with eyes that seemed unseeing, and walked into the bedroom.

After a few moments, Paul Pry heard her voice.

“I’m getting on some more comfortable things. Open that door, will you? The boy’s waiting for an answer. Tell him the lady says yes.”

Paul Pry approached the door. This time he opened it with his left hand, and his right hand was hovering around the lapels of his coat.

As had been so aptly observed by the lady herself, he was a total stranger.

The boy in uniform was waiting, standing just as he had been when the door closed. His eyes showed a stab of disappointment as they focused on Paul Pry.

“The lady,” said Paul Pry, “says yes.”

The boy nodded, still stood, staring.

“Gee, mister,” he blurted, “you ain’t her husband, are you?”

“No,” said Paul Pry, “I’m a total stranger, and I’m going in just a minute or two.”

The boy grinned.

“Good night, mister.”

“Good night,” said Paul Pry, and was careful to shoot the bolt on the lock when he had closed the door.

The woman came out of the bedroom dressed in a filmy negligee.

“This,” she said, “feels more comfortable.”

“It looks like a million dollars,” said Paul Pry.

“You gave the boy the message?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.

“That was all, wasn’t it?” asked Paul Pry. “Just that the lady said yes?”

Her eyes were starry.

“Ain’t that enough?”

Paul Pry turned toward his glass.

“On second thought,” he remarked irrelevantly, “I think I’ll have another drink myself. Can I mix you one?”

And he started toward the kitchen picking up the two glasses as he went.

“No!” she snapped, and the starry gleam had gone from her eyes, leaving them as coldly observant as were the eyes of Paul Pry.

Paul Pry mixed up the drink, taking care to make far more soda water in its content than gin, and returned to the room, the ice clinking in the glass.

The woman had flung herself on the sofa. The negligee had fallen back from her raised bare arm which held a cigarette in a long jade and ivory holder. She was staring at Paul Pry.

“That message,” she said, “was from a widowed sister. Her child’s sick, and she wants me to come out and stay with her tonight. I hate the thought of nursing a sick child.”

“And of telling her of the brother who was taken for a ride?” he asked.

“I shan’t tell her!” snapped the figure on the couch.

“I see,” he muttered, noncommittally.

“You would,” she flared.

Paul Pry shot her a swifter glance. The face was as fierce as that of a tigress, and it softened instantly into a smile of invitation.

“But I want to thank you — properly, when I have the opportunity, for saving my life. When can I see you?”

“Any time.”

“Well. I’ve had a minute of relaxation, and that’s enough. I’ll pack my suitcase, and get started. Tell you what — you got any friends in the city?”

The tone was anxious.

“Not a friend,” said Paul Pry.

Paul Pry hesitated for an appreciable fraction of a second.

A swift smile darted about her lips.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “You don’t need to explain. Listen, maybe you can do something else for me. Go to the Billington Hotel and register under the name of George Inman, will you? You don’t need to stay there, just take a room so you’ll be registered, and so you can get mail there. If you’ll do that, I’ll drop you a note as soon as the child gets well.”

“O.K.,” said Paul Pry, his face lightening. “That’ll be a swell idea. George Inman, eh?”

“George Inman,” she said.

The woman kicked off the folds of the negligee, and the result was rather startling.

“And get out of here, so I can get into some street clothes. I’ll drop you a note.”

Paul Pry finished his drink, reached for the doorknob.

“I’ll be seeing you,” she said.

“Toodle-loo,” remarked Paul Pry after the manner of a male who has been utterly hypnotized.

“Cheerio,” she cooed as the door closed.

Paul Pry, in the corridor, became swiftly cautious. He didn’t go down the back stairs, the way he had come, but went to the front of the building, found an automatic elevator, entered the cage and pressed the button which took him to the lobby. He walked out, past a desk where a coloured lad in a brilliant uniform sat at a telephone switchboard, and out onto the lighted street.

He walked a few steps, retraced his steps and looked at the index over the mail boxes.

The woman’s name was the same as that on the letter. Lola Beeker.

Paul Pry called a cab.

The address that he gave was within half a block from the place he had been standing when the woman had debouched from the car, a vision in white.

He discharged the cab, paid the meter, and stubbed his toe as he turned back to the sidewalk. He tried to get up, but sank back with a groan. The cab driver, suddenly solicitous, jumped from the cab, came toward him.

“What is it, boss?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul Pry. “Something happened in my leg, a nerve or something. I can’t move it.”

The taxi driver straightened, peered up and down the side street.

“There’s a doctor over there, about seventy-five feet or so. Think you can make it?”

Paul Pry groaned, nodded.

“I’ll try,” he said.

A passer-by, attracted by the sprawled figure, came cautiously over. The cab driver explained. Between them, they got Paul Pry to his feet and took him along the pavement to the flat where a sign announced that Philip G Manwright, MD, held office hours from two to five in the afternoon on every day except Sunday.

The cab driver pressed the bell.

After some two or three tries, there sounded motion from within the house, and feet thudded along the corridor which led to the door. A light clicked on, and a man in bathrobe with hair that was mussed up and eyes that were slightly swollen with sleep, regarded them in dour appraisal.

“Doctor?” asked the cab driver.

The man nodded.

“This guy did a Brode an’ busted a leg or somethin’ right out in front of the joint,” said the driver.

“Come in,” invited Doctor Manwright.

They shuffled along the corridor, into a surgical room where an operating table occupied the centre of the floor under a droplight.

“Put him down there,” said the doctor.

They stretched Paul Pry out on the table.

“Which leg?” asked the doctor.

“Right.”

He passed exploring fingers over it.

“Something seemed to happen and all the strength went out of it. It’s pricking like pins and needles now,” said Paul Pry.

The doctor frowned, flexed the leg.

“Humph.”

The cab driver grinned cheerfully at Paul Pry.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll run along.”

“Better drive the cab up and wait,” said Paul Pry.

“O.K., boss.”

The two men ambled awkwardly out of the room. The doctor drew the bathrobe about him and regarded Paul Pry speculatively.

“Any peculiar feeling about the heart?” he asked.

“None,” said Paul Pry.

“Notice any sudden pain just above the leg when it gave out?”

“None.”

“Nervous?”

“Very. I can’t sleep. I got all sorts of strange symptoms.”

The doctor felt the leg again.

“I’ll go get some clothes on,” he announced, “and we’ll give you a once-over.”

“Sorry to bother you,” said Paul Pry. “I’m feeling better now. The circulation seems to be coming back.”

“In any pain?” asked the doctor.

“Just the pins and needles.”

The doctor crossed to a cabinet, took out a bottle, poured a few drops into a glass of water.

“Drink this,” he said. “I’ll dress and come in again. I won’t be three minutes.”

“O.K.,” said Paul Pry and sipped at the glass.

The doctor left the room.

Paul Pry got up and dumped the mixture down the sink, crossed on swift, silent feet into the office which was next to the surgical room, and stared at the flat-topped desk, the bookcase, the card index of files.

He opened the files. The light which came from the surgical room enabled him to pick out the letters of the index. He consulted the “B’s” and pulled out a card marked “Beeker, Laura.”

Then Paul Pry noticed a day book on the desk. He opened it and consulted the current date. It appeared that, between eleven and twelve, Doctor Manwright had treated a gentleman who gave the name of Frank Jamison.

Paul Pry went to the card index, and pocketed the card of Frank Jamison. Then he went back to the surgical room and stretched out on the operating table, closing his eyes and breathing regularly.

The doctor came into the room within a few minutes, looking gravely professional. The depression had undoubtedly hit the medical business, and Paul Pry felt certain that the doctor would at least lay a foundation for a stiff charge for a night visit.

Nor was he wrong. For twenty minutes the doctor examined him. At the end of that time, there was doubt and a certain suspicion in the doctor’s eyes.

“You’d better come back tomorrow afternoon. What’s the name?”

“George Inman.”

“Where do you live?”

“Billington Hotel.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Ever had any heart trouble, dizzy spells, rheumatism?”

Paul Pry nodded gloomily.

“I feel dizzy every once in a while,” he said, “and I used to have rheumatism in my right shoulder.”

The doctor sucked in a yawn.

He pulled a card from a drawer, filled it out, yawned again.

“Come tomorrow afternoon at any time between two and four. The charge for this visit is — twenty dollars.”

Paul Pry produced his wallet, took out the bills, peeled off a twenty. The doctor glimpsed a couple of the hundreds and one that seemed even larger in denomination. He ceased to yawn.

“I may want to put you in a hospital for observation,” he said. “It’s a baffling case.”

“Nothing serious?” asked Paul Pry.

“I can’t tell — yet.”

Paul Pry tested the leg.

“Feel all right?”

“Yes, sorta numb, but all right. I can walk.”

“Go to your hotel and go to bed,” said Doctor Manwright.

Paul Pry hobbled to the door. The cab driver was waiting to assist him to the cab.

“Billington Hotel,” said Paul Pry.

“O.K.,” said the driver.

The doctor bowed, said good morning, and closed the door. Paul Pry hobbled into the cab.

4

At the Billington Hotel Paul Pry registered as George Inman and was given a room.

“There’s a telephone call for you,” said the clerk. “The party seemed very anxious to have you call as soon as you came in.”

He handed Paul Pry a number.

“O.K.,” said Paul Pry.

He went to his room, tipped the bellboy, pocketed the key and went out.

“Did you call the number?” asked the clerk.

“I called it,” said Paul Pry.

The clerk nodded, snapped the lock on the safe, yawned. Paul Pry boarded a cruising cab. The address which he gave was within a block of the place where the girl had driven him into the private driveway which terminated in the mysterious garage at the rear of the apartment house of such unconventional design.

Paul Pry told the cab to wait, walked the block, climbed a fence, and found himself in the cemented courtyard in the rear of the apartment house. He opened the back door, climbed the carpeted stairs.

He paused at the door of the girl’s apartment long enough to go through the formality of pressing the button of the door signal. As he had expected, there was no answer, no sign of life from within.

Paul Pry produced a flat leather receptacle which contained some two dozen keys, chosen for general efficiency. He opened the door with the third key, boldly switched on the light and walked in.

He closed and bolted the door, lit a cigarette, hummed a little tune, and walked into the bedroom.

The young woman had left her evening clothes, crumpled into a careless wad, and thrown on the bed. She had evidently donned a plain street suit which would be inconspicuous. The white fur coat was hanging in the closet.

Paul Pry looked on the top of the dresser, frowned, prowled about the drawers, paused to consider, and then went to the closet and put his hand in the pocket of the fur coat. His face lit with a smile of satisfaction as his questing fingers closed on a folded sheet of paper. He pulled it out.

It was the typewritten note that the woman had taken from the messenger boy.

Paul Pry read it.

The note was unsigned.

Paul Pry thrust it in his pocket, paused, halfway to the door, then returned and put it back in the pocket of the fur coat. He clicked off the lights, opened the door and slipped out into the corridor.

He walked to the cab, and told the driver to take him to a certain street corner near the wholesale district. That corner was near the spot where Paul Pry maintained a secret apartment, a place where he could live and be reasonably safe from danger while he formulated his plans, rested between coups.

He discharged the cab, made certain that he was not followed, and entered the apartment. Mugs Magoo blinked glassy eyes at him.

“You still here?”

“Sure. Where’d you think I was going?”

“To keep an appointment with the undertaker.”

“Not yet.”

Mugs Magoo grunted, reached for the bottle of whiskey that was at his elbow.

“Not yet, but soon.”

Paul Pry ignored the comment, took off his hat and light coat, sat down in a chair, and lit a cigarette.

“Why the danger signal, Mugs?”

Mugs Magoo snorted.

“Because the place was lousy with guns. I spotted ’em from across the street. They were in the shadows behind you. They weren’t waiting for you, or you’d have been dead long before you got the signal. But I figured there was going to be some guns popping, and the innocent bystander usually makes the biggest target. Then again, being a witness to a gang killing ain’t so nice from the standpoint of life insurance risks.”

Paul Pry nodded. His voice, when he spoke, was almost dreamy.

“The girl, Mugs?”

“That was Lola Beeker. She’s in with a big bottle, name of Bill Sacanoni. I think that was him that crawled outa the car an’ got beat up.”

Paul Pry nodded.

“Why didn’t they use guns, Mugs?”

“Wanted to avoid the bulls for one thing, and wanted to muscle Bill away. They’ll hold him for something. The guns had the street cleared. They started turning pedestrians away right after you slipped through. There’s a gangster’s doctor in the block, and I guess they was spottin’ his office.”

Paul Pry reached in his inside pocket and took out the cards he had purloined from the files of the gangsters’ physician.

He looked at the card of Lola Beeker.

It gave her name, age, address, list of symptoms that had to do with a minor nervous complaint. The card bore a notation that Bill Sacanoni would pay the bill. The card also gave the address of Bill Sacanoni.

Paul Pry turned it under, and looked at the card of the man who had been treated that evening, between the hours of eleven and twelve.

The name was Frank Jamison. The address was in an apartment hotel well toward the upper end of town. The card gave lists of various treatments. Once the treatment was for alcoholism. Once the treatment was for gunshot wounds, and the last treatment was for a stabbing wound in the shoulder.

Paul Pry nodded.

That would be the man who had swung the blackjack at the girl, the one who had felt the bite of Paul Pry’s sword cane as it jabbed home.

“Who is Frank Jamison, Mugs?”

Mugs Magoo regarded the empty whiskey glass with judicial solemnity, reached for the bottle, and knitted his brows.

“Don’t place the moniker. Maybe it’s phoney. Know what he looks like?”

“Five feet nine, one hundred and seventy or about that. Has a funny pointed jaw, like a battleship’s bow—”

Mugs Magoo interrupted. “That places him,” he said, “and I remember now he used to use the name o’ Jamison. It’s his middle name. Frank Jamison Kling is the full name. He’s a big shot. They say he makes a specialty of musclin’ people into big ransoms.”

“Is he,” asked Paul Pry, “likely to be the head of his gang?”

“Sure. If he was in that scuffle about the car, he’s the man that was running the show.”

“And likely to be the one who gets the money when it’s over?”

“Sure to,” grunted Mugs.

“How about George Inman?” asked Paul Pry.

Mugs Magoo lowered the whiskey glass. Surprise showed in the glassy eyes that were usually so utterly devoid of expression.

“Guy,” he said, “don’t tell me you’re monkeyin’ with that bird!”

“Why?” asked Paul Pry.

Mugs Magoo heaved a deep sigh.

“I gotta hand it to you. It’s a gift, gettin’ into deep water every time you start wadin’. You don’t ever pick no ordinary dangers. When you start gettin’ into trouble, you wade right in over your necktie.

“That bird Inman, now — Well, there’s talk going around about that baby. He’s one of the upper crust of gangsters, and he’s playing both ends against the middle. Of course, George Inman ain’t nothing but a name. It’s the name this big shot uses when he’s slipping over a fast one.

“He works under cover all the time, and nobody’s ever been able to get a line on him. They know the name, and that’s all. It’s a cinch he’s one of the biggest shots in town. That much they know because they got sort of a line on what Inman knows.

“There’s fifteen or twenty of the big guys that’d give a neat slice of jack to learn who Inman really was. When they knew, Inman wouldn’t last long. If you’re monkeying around with anybody that gives the name of Inman, just gimme the money to go get myself measured for a suit of black. I’ll need it before I get any fatter, anyway; and I may need it as soon as the tailor can get it fitted.”

Paul Pry arose, crossed to the closet where he kept his collection of drums.

He took down a Buddhist temple drum that resembled a huge bronze bowl. This drum was merely rubbed into sound, not struck with a stick as other drums were.

Paul Pry took the leather-covered stick and started rubbing the lip of the drum. His hand moved slowly. At first there was no sound whatever. Then, as the speed of the rubbing stick increased, there sounded a low monotone of sound which filled the apartment, yet which seemed to emanate from no particular source.

“It drives me nuts,” said Mugs Magoo.

Paul Pry said nothing until after the last bit of sound had died away. Then he sighed, raised his eyes to Mugs Magoo’s face.

“Alcohol, Mugs, has robbed your ears of their sense of rhythm.”

“If they’d only rob ’em of a sense of sound, so far as those drums are concerned, so I couldn’t hear ’em, I’d be better satisfied.”

Paul Pry let his eyes rest dreamily upon the drum.

“It soothes the soul, Mugs. That’s why they use it as a preliminary to worship in those temples where the religion is a philosophical rite of inner meditation. It’s a wonderful philosophy, Buddhism, Mugs, and the drum has a tendency to fill my mind with inner quiet, a comparative poise that’s so necessary to concentration.”

Mugs Magoo refilled his whiskey glass.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a great philosophy maybe. But the trouble with them Buddhists is that they don’t wear no pants.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“That’s begging the question, Mugs.”

“The hell it is,” retorted Mugs Magoo, “you’re goin’ heathen, working your mind up to the right pitch with a lot o’ boomin’ drums. One o’ these days you’ll take to smokin’ one o’ these here hookahs, an’ throwin’ your pants away. I’m humorin’ you now, because if you was dyin’ o’ pneumonia, I’d give you your last wishes. You’re just the same as a dyin’ man right now. And if you’re monkeyin’ around with a guy that goes by the name of George Inman, you’re just the same as parked on a marble slab.”

Paul Pry laid down the drumstick.

“I’m glad you mentioned this Inman again, Mugs. It reminds me of a telephone call I almost forgot to make.”

He crossed the room to the telephone, called the number which the clerk at the Billington Hotel had given him.

“Hello,” he said as a feminine voice answered, “this is George Inman, at the Billington Hotel. Was someone calling me?”

At the other end of the room there came a startled gasp, a choking exclamation that was mingled with the sputtering noise of a man who is almost strangling.

The woman’s voice crisped a swift comment.

“Where are you, George dear? In your room?”

It was the voice of the woman who had worn the white fur coat.

“Yes,” said Paul Pry.

“Just a minute, George, there’s a friend of mine wants to speak with you. He wants to give you an important message.”

There came the sounds over the wire of rustling motion, then a man’s voice.

“Yeah, hello,” it gruffed.

“Yes?” said Paul Pry.

“Well, listen,” said the man’s voice, speaking hastily. “I’m a friend of Lola’s. You recognized her voice over the telephone?”

“Yes. Sure,” said Paul Pry, “but I’m afraid I don’t want to deal with any friend of hers. My business is with her.”

“Yeah, sure it is,” said the man. “But she can’t get to come alone. She wanted me to give you a ring so I could explain what’s happened.

“She’s in a jam, and she’s got to see you right away. Now you wait right there in your room. Keep the door locked. Don’t open up for anyone until she gets there, and don’t even answer the telephone. Get me?

“We’re coming over just as soon as we can make a break, and we want to be sure we ain’t tailed. See? Now you and Lola can go ahead with that thing just like you planned, only you gotta wait until she gets there. Here she is on the telephone.”

The man relinquished the instrument. The voice of the girl who had worn the fur coat came to Paul Pry’s ears.

“It’s all right, George. I’ll explain when we get there. Only sit right in the room. Don’t open until you hear someone rap twice, then a pause, then three raps, then another pause, and then a single rap.

“That’ll be me. The man with me is O.K.”

“O.K.,” he said, at length. “If you say it’s O.K. I guess it is.”

“Right over,” said the woman’s voice. “You stay right there until we get there.”

Paul Pry hung up the receiver, turned to stare into Mugs Magoo’s florid features.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Mugs. “I thought you’d done the damndest fool things a guy could ever do — but being George Inman! That takes the cake! An’ when you spilled that dope it made me swallow my drink of whiskey down the wrong side of my throat, and anything that’ll make a guy do that with really good whiskey, is a public calamity.

“Go ahead an’ play around while you’ve got the chance, because when you get all stretched out with a coroner’s jury starin’ at the doctor, while he points out the course of the bullets through the body, you won’t have no kick outa life at all. Just go right ahead, guy, only shake hands with me before you go out again. I hate to see you go, but you might as well finish it up and get the suspense over with.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“Mugs,” he said solemnly, “I have an idea that I’m going to meet some tough gangsters. That is, Mugs, they think they’re tough. But, to me, they’re going to be nice little goosies, laying golden eggs.”

Mugs Magoo disregarded the glass in favour of more direct action. As he removed the neck of the bottle from appreciative lips, he muttered: “An’ there’s a frail at the bottom of it. That’s a cinch.”

Paul Pry nodded. He was putting on his coat, hefting the balance of his sword cane. “Yes, Mugs, you’re right again. There’s a lady at the bottom of it, Mugs, a lady who says yes.”

Mugs Magoo extended a solemn hand.

“You was a good pal,” he said, “—while you lasted!”

5

The streets of the city held that damp cheerlessness which comes a couple of hours before dawn. They were almost deserted, and Paul Pry, anxious to escape observation, walked for three rapid blocks before he swung over to the main boulevard where he knew he could find a cab even at that hour.

His actions were not even furtive. He had a coil of light rope wound around his waist, a little handbag that contained certain articles. He was smiling, rather a fixed smile, and his eyes were diamond hard.

Paul Pry sent the cab to the address given on the purloined card as being the residence of Frank Jamison. The apartment hotel was of exactly the type he had expected.

Paul Pry entered the hotel after having paid the cab, approached the desk. He wrote his name on the register.

“Something for about a month,” he said. “Frank Jamison knows me. He said I’d be comfortable here. I’d like to get on the same floor he’s on. Maybe I’ll be longer than a month. Maybe it won’t be so long, but you get a month’s rent cash on the nail.”

The man at the desk nodded.

“Mr. Jamison’s on the fourth, 438. I can let you have 431. That’s just a ways down the corridor and on the other side.”

“O.K.,” said Paul Pry. “Jamison ain’t in, is he?”

“I don’t think so. He’s out quite late.”

“Yeah, I know. Give’m a buzz, just in case.”

The man behind the counter-like desk stepped to the glassed-in partition behind which sat a telephone operator.

“Give Jamison in 438 a jingle. Tell him his friend’s here, Mr. Pry.”

The girl plugged in a line, shook her head, after an interval.

“Out,” said the man as he swung around to face Paul Pry.

“Now listen, Frank Jamison and me are going to do some business that we ain’t telling all of Frank’s friends about. So when Frank comes in, he’ll have some guys with him. Just don’t say anything about me being here.”

The clerk was businesslike.

“We make a practice of minding our own business here, Mr. Pry. You make your own announcements. And the first instalment, by the way, will be one hundred dollars.”

Paul Pry handed the clerk two bills.

“Never mind the receipt. I’m hitting the hay. The baggage’ll get here in the morning.”

Paul Pry went to the fourth floor, was shown to his apartment. He tipped the boy who took him up, waited until he heard the elevator door clang shut, and then walked down the corridor to 438, fitted his key assortment to the lock until he had the proper skeleton, heard the bolt click, and walked in. He left the hall door open, and the light from the hallway flooded enough of the room to give him the lay of the land.

Paul Pry entered the bedroom, ripped the blankets from the bed, went to the bathroom, soaked the blankets in water, wrung out some of the surplus, took the wet blankets into the front room, suspended them by their corners.

He worked with swift precision, and used the coil of light rope, hardly more than a heavy twine. He anchored this rope to the chandeliers, easing the weight of the blankets on the light rope so that he would not pull out the lighting fixture.

When he had finished, he had two wet blankets suspended in such a manner that they almost blocked the rest of the room from the doorway.

He took from his pocket a little metallic object that resembled a fountain pen, stood a little distance back from the wet blankets, pointed the metallic object, and pressed a hidden button.

There was a dull explosion, sounding hardly more loud than the smashing of a small inflated paper bag. A stream of swirling vapour mushroomed out until it hit the wet blankets. Then it seemed to be enveloped, the tear gas having an affinity for the moist surface.

Paul Pry stepped swiftly out of the apartment room, closed the door behind him, used his skeleton key, and twisted the bolt of the lock.

Then he went down the corridor, took some of the light rope, measured off the length of the corridor, and took a round doorstop from the little bag which he carried. He screwed this doorstop into the wood of the corridor, well over to one side, made a loop in the rope with a bowline knot holding it against slips, dropped the loop over the doorstop, then screwed a similar doorstop into the other side of the corridor.

When he tightened the rope, he had a perfectly taut line some three inches above the level of the floor. He surveyed the result, nodded, removed the rope, leaving the doorstops in place, and went back to his own room.

The place where he had put the doorstops was almost opposite the entrance of apartment 431, the one on which he had paid the rent.

He yawned, removed his shoes, closed, but did not lock the door, lit a cigarette, and sprawled out in one of the overstuffed easy chairs.

There was the first glint of dawn in the air, although the interior of the apartment hotel still remained murked with darkness when Paul Pry consulted his wristwatch and frowned. It looked very much as though he had drawn a blank.

The slamming of the elevator door at the end of the corridor came to his ears, and his stockinged feet came to the carpeted floor of his room with swift silence. He approached the door, opened it the merest crack.

There were three men walking down the hallway with grim efficiency. One of them carried a black bag. His right shoulder was bulky with bandage.

They paused before room 438. Keys rattled.

“Anyway,” husked one of the men in a low voice, “Inman was registered there. He must have—”

“Shut up,” snapped one of the group.

The hoarse voice ceased abruptly.

The man who held the bag opened the door of the room.

The three barged in there.

Paul Pry stepped out of his door, tossed the loop of twine over the doorstop, twisted the other end of the rope over the other doorstop, stepped back in the doorway of his room. He made no effort to conceal himself. His shoes, laces knotted, were in his belt. His eyes, diamond hard, were staring down the corridor.

The door of 438 burst open. Three men spewed from the room, hands stretched outward. There was the glint of the dim light on blued steel, the sound of terror-stricken oaths.

The man who had fitted the key to the lock continued to carry the bag. But there was a gun in his other hand.

They ran down the corridor with awkward steps, their streaming eyes of no use to them. Blinded, they groped and stumbled. They passed Paul Pry’s door, and then hit the rope.

The first man took the second with him as he went down. The third stumbled over the heap. A gun went off with a roar, and the sound of curses followed the detonation.

Paul Pry stepped from his room.

His position could not have been chosen with better care, nor to better advantage. He held a blackjack in his hand, the leather thong looped around his wrist.

The man with the bag straightened.

The blackjacket did its stuff with smooth efficiency. Paul Pry’s hand closed about the handle of the black bag as the grip of the man who had been sapped relaxed.

There sounded a woman’s scream. A figure in pyjamas opened one of the doors. Another shot rang out. The man in pyjamas jumped back for the shelter of his room.

Paul Pry walked down the hall toward the back stairs. His stockinged feet gave no sound. As he reached the stairs, he slipped his shoes on, and ran down the staircase.

Day was dawning as he slipped the chain on a side exit and walked out into the street. The street was calm with the grey tranquillity of early dawn.

Paul Pry walked swiftly, slowed his pace when he was well away from the building, picked up a cab after he had been walking for about ten minutes. He gave the address of a downtown hotel, and was taken there at top speed.

He discharged the cab, broke his trail by going to the Union Depot in another cab and taking a third cab to his apartment.

Mugs Magoo was asleep, sprawled in the easy chair, his relaxed hand stretched toward the whiskey bottle. The bottle was empty.

Paul Pry grinned, closed the door, locked it, turned his attention to the bag. It was locked. He took his knife and slit it open.

The interior, back of where the leather bulged out through the cut edge, showed a mass of greenbacks.

“There should be ten grand here,” said Paul Pry.

He chuckled softly as he counted it and found that it was an even ten thousand dollars.

He took the bag and the money, crossed to the safe, opened the fireproof receptacle, tossed in bag and money, closed the door, spun the dial of the combination, and went to bed.

Past experience had taught him that Mugs Magoo desired nothing more than to be left alone. He would awaken presently, seek the water tap and then go to bed. In the morning he would be as glassily-eyed efficient as ever.

Paul Pry slept the morning through.

The afternoon shadows were creeping across the street, when he felt a hand at his shoulder.

He looked up into the puzzled countenance of Mugs Magoo.

“Listen, guy,” said Mugs, “I don’t want to disturb your beauty sleep, but there’s a lot o’ stuff goin’ on, an’ I’m afraid it’s something that you’re concerned about.”

Paul Pry grinned the sleep out of his eyes, and ran his fingers through tousled hair.

“Shoot,” he commented, briefly.

“It’s about Inman and Lola Beeker, and this guy, Sacanoni,” said Mugs Magoo, speaking rapidly, and out of one side of his mouth. “It seems Jamison got Sacanoni, and used the muscle stuff to make Lola Beeker get ten grand that they’d put away for getaway money in case anything happened.

“Then it seems Lola Beeker knew who this guy Inman really was. They made her turn him up. But she worked some sort of a funny gag, and Inman slipped out of his room in the hotel with the whole damned place literally swarming with gunmen.

“But they let Sacanoni go when the jane kicked through with her share of the info and the ten grand. Then Beeker and Sacanoni did a fade.”

Paul Pry yawned.

“But,” he said, “why wake me up?”

“Because,” said Mugs, “there’s a late tip out that this Inman that’s been raising so much hell was really Sacanoni all the time. The gangs knew that Lola Beeker knew who Inman was, but they never figured he might be just another name for Sacanoni. So, then, who was this guy at the Billington Hotel?”

Paul Pry reached for the cigarettes.

“Mugs,” he observed, “you still haven’t any reason for disturbing my slumbers.”

Mugs Magoo blurted out that which came next.

“The hell I haven’t. Listen to this. When Jamison and his gang went to salt the ten grand something happened and they got slicked out of it. They thought it was this guy, Inman, only—”

“Only what?” asked Paul Pry.

“Only they found that some guy had come in and taken a room right where it’d do the most good, and that this bird registered under the name of Paul Pry! And there’s ten thousand berries gone bye-bye.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“Mugs,” he said, “you misjudge me. All I did was to deliver a message. I delivered it to a boy. I simply told him ‘The lady says yes,’ and that was all.”

Mugs nodded solemnly.

“But there’s ten grand in the safe this morning.”

Paul Pry let his face brighten.

“Maybe. Mugs, while we were both asleep, a dear little goose came and laid another golden egg!”