Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

Woozy Wiker fell into step with him. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Poof!” said Paul Pry, and darted away into the stream of traffic as a wary trout darts from the shadow of a fisherman. There was the slamming of a taxicab door, and Woozy Wiker was left standing on the pavement, regarding the place where Paul Pry had been standing.

The lead-coloured eyes of Woozy Wiker were filmed with thought.

Paul Pry went directly to a store which made a specialty of selling odd pets. The aisles were lined with cages from which were emitted various squawks, screams, catcalls and odors.

“I want a large rat,” he said.

“White?” the attendant asked indifferently.

“I would prefer more of a domestic colour.”

“You mean a dun?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see what we have.”

“And it should be an active rat, one that is naturally inclined to be restless.”

“Just a minute,” said the clerk in a tone of wearied patience. He was gone some three minutes and emerged from the tangled piles of cages in the rear with a small wire cage. In it were two large rats.

“These are known as pack rats. They are very large, and very restless.”

Paul Pry produced a billfold.

“I will take them both,” he said briskly. “They are exactly what I have been looking for.”

Five minutes later he emerged from the store with a bulky package under his arm and sought another taxicab. This time he went directly to a place which specialized in safes. There were huge wall safes, small portable safes, strong boxes, bond containers, fireproof filing cabinets.

A clerk regarded him with professional affability.

“I want,” said Paul Pry, “a metal lock box that will resist any attempt at opening it for about five minutes.”

The clerk’s affability vanished under an expression of wide-eyed astonishment.

“Five minutes?” he asked.

“Five minutes of protection,” assured Paul Pry.

“Yes, sir. And how big a box?”

“Oh, one that’s about big enough to hold a million dollars’ worth of crown jewels.”

“Huh,” gulped the clerk. “Why you’d want one of our special burglar-proof, torch-proof, tamper-proof—”

Paul Pry interrupted. “I want a metal container that will last for just about five minutes,” he said.

The clerk wilted under the diamond-hard glitter of Paul Pry’s eyes.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and moved with such swift alacrity that it was less than ten minutes later when Paul Pry walked from the store and summoned another cab. This time he had two packages under his arm.

Mugs Magoo was sitting in Paul Pry’s apartment when that individual returned with his strange purchases. There was an empty whiskey bottle on the table; another one beside it showed but half full.

Mugs Magoo’s glassy eyes regarded Paul Pry lugubriously.

“You still here?”

“Where did you think I’d be?” asked Paul Pry.

“Pushin’ daisies,” said Mugs.

Paul grinned, unwrapped his purchases, set on the table the cage containing the huge rats, the lock box which was almost a young safe; almost, but not quite.

Mugs Magoo nodded gravely.

“Quite all right,” he said.

“What’s quite all right, Mugs?”

“You acting this way — now.”

“What do you mean, now.”

“I mean before you started to act goofy I wasn’t cock-eyed enough to be drunk, and it showed that one of us was going crazy, and I don’t want to go crazy — not right now. But this time I’m just plastered enough so it all seems quite natural. That’s why I’m going to take another drink, and ain’t even going to ask you are they really rats in that cage or are they the beginnings of me going goofy.” And Mugs Magoo poured himself another drink.

Paul Pry regarded the rats, gazing at him with black eyes and inquisitive whiskers. Their restless paws scratched at the bars of the cage.

“Mugs,” he said, “it has been observed that everything contains, within itself, the seeds of its own destruction.”

Mugs Magoo tossed off the drink.

“Uh-huh.”

“Apparently you’re not impressed.”

“Whatcha want me to do? Fall on your neck and weep?” asked the glassy-eyed Mugs Magoo. “I know that. I can’t wrap up the idea in the same high-soundin’ words that you used, but I can tell you the same thing. Ain’t I been preachin’ it for a long time? I told you you’d get yourself put on a marble slab, picking on Big Front Gilvray and copping the swag as fast as he got it.

“You’ve been pretty successful. You’ve picked up around twenty thousand dollars in reward money, net to you. And you’ve carried it too far. It’s this seeds of destruction business you’re talking about. You been too successful. If you’d missed once or twice, Gilvray would just be annoyed. But you’ve got him where he’s got to bump you off to keep in business.”

Paul Pry laughed.

“Well reasoned, Mugs. He’s got to bump me off to keep in business. I don’t intend to be bumped off. Therefore, he’s got to quit business.

“But what I had reference to, Mugs, was another matter. I mentioned that everything contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. I was referring to the scheme of holding up business places in an armoured car with bulletproof windows.”

“Huh,” remarked Mugs Magoo, “that don’t contain no seeds of destruction. It’s got the Chicago cops paralysed. They can’t do nothing. A bus that looks like an ordinary touring car turns out to be a fort. A copper chases ’em and gets sprayed with lead, and don’t have a chance. They’re sitting behind bulletproof windows, and giving him the works, and laughing at him all the while they’re doing it.”

Paul Pry nodded enigmatically.

“Yet there’s one factor, one particular factor that is the weak point in the entire scheme. That car has to be operated in a certain manner in order to be effective.”

“Well, what’s the answer?” asked Mugs, his bleary eyes peering at Paul Pry.

“There isn’t any — yet. But there will be some time this afternoon — if the police will do what I rather expect they will.”

Mugs Magoo poured another drink.

“Aw, go push daisies,” he said. Then after an interval, “What you counting on the police doing?”

“That,” said Paul Pry, “is where I want your opinion. You have been a police officer, and you know police psychology. Suppose there was a desperate gangster hidden in that closet, ready to shoot me down with a machine gun, and suppose I managed to notify the police. What would they do?”

Mugs Magoo let his bleary eyes rest upon Paul Pry’s countenance.

“You mean what’d the gangster do while you were doing all that?”

“No. What would the police do?”

“After they got here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell the coroner to come and sweep up the remains.”

“No. I mean if the gangster was still in the closet.”

Mugs snorted.

“Oh, that! Well, in my time they’d send one man to bust open the closet door and slam that baby to the hoosegow, and if the gangster got tough, he’d have a face that looked like a hamburger steak. But them times have passed. Now they’d send a squad with tear bombs and machine guns and riot shotguns, and they’d keep well back out of the way and bang lots of tear bombs into the room until they smoked out the bandit. Then they’d take him to the station and he’d be a hero to all the other gangsters. Half an hour later a judge would slam his fist on a habeas corpus for some slick lawyer that voted for him last election. Then the case would never come to trial.”

Paul Pry nodded, walked to the telephone, called the police headquarters.

“Quick,” he breathed into the transmitter, his voice low, but fairly trembling with excitement, “this is Paul Pry. You know the gangs have threatened to get me. Well, there’s a gangster in the closet of my room with a machine gun, waiting for me to come into the other room so he can shoot me. Get a squad here quick. But don’t take any chances. He’s desperate. He’s got a machine gun and a thousand rounds of ammunition.”