Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

She sighed.

“I’m glad you feel that way. You see, I was the moll of Harry the Dip, and they took me for a ride. Maybe you read about it in yesterday’s paper. Well, they thought I might get sore and squeal, so they decided to take me for a ride.

“I was to visit a girl friend and stay with her for a while. She said she’d send a friend in his car. God, she double-crossed me! Damn her. I’ll claw her eyes out. Well, that’s about all there was to it. This ‘friend’ jabbed a gun in my ribs. The car stopped and picked up another man. They took me out on the river road, turned up a side road, found a place that suited them, and got ready to bump me off.

“But I got a break. One of them sort of fell for me. I got to playing them one against the other, watched my chance and jumped into the brush. They both shot at me half a dozen times, and I guess the fear and the running and all that just sent me off my nut. I don’t remember anything else until I found myself pulling the cry-baby act on your shoulder. Was I a nuisance?”

“Not at all,” said Paul Pry.

She sighed.

“God, it’s awful lonesome with Harry gone!”

Paul Pry made no comment. The blue eyes flashed up and down his profile. The overcoat fell away on one side, disclosing a large expanse of shapely limb. But the eyes of Paul Pry, narrowed into calculating slits, remained on the road.

Slowly, with a tardiness that was almost an invitation, the girl replaced the flap of the overcoat and regarded him thoughtfully.

“Are you afraid of getting mixed up with the gangs just for rescuing me?”

Paul Pry answered that at once.

“No,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would be.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Louise Eckhart,” she told him. Then, after a moment, “My friends call me Lou.”

“Where do you want to go, Lou?”

She smiled up at him.

“I like you,” she said.

He nodded. “Where to?” he repeated.

“I’ve got a suitcase parked at the Union Depot. I did have the ticket in my stocking. Wonder if it’s gone?”

She pulled the overcoat to one side, searched the tops of her stockings, first the right, then the left. She handed him a crumpled bit of pasteboard.

“That’s luck. I can get some clothes. Would you mind driving to the depot, getting the suitcase, and then driving me where I can dress?”

“Not at all,” said Paul Pry. “I’d better get some gasoline if we’re going that far, though. I’m about out.”

They were approaching the junction of the river road with the through boulevard, and the lights of gasoline stations flung themselves out across the darkness.

The girl sighed.

“You,” she proclaimed, “are a regular guy.”

Paul Pry made no comment. He drove into a gasoline station.

“Fill her up,” he told the attendant, and walked to the telephone, gave the number of his apartment, and heard the voice of “Mugs” Magoo on the telephone.

“Drunk, Mugs?”

“Not yet. Gimme ten minutes more an’ I will be.”

“Forget it. Take a drink of water and chase down to the Union Depot. I’m going to drive in there with a moll. Manage to give her the once-over and see if you place her. Then go back to the apartment. I’ll meet you there.”

Mugs Magoo grunted.

“I’ll do it all for you — all except take the drink of water,” he remarked. “Water’s poison to my system,” and he clicked the receiver back in place.

Paul Pry paid the attendant. The girl watched him with shrewd eyes. “Telling the wife you were detained at the office?” she asked.

“No wife.”

“Betcha I’m making you miss a heavy date, then.”

Paul Pry grinned.

“It’s worth it.”

He got into the car, drove rapidly and skilfully through the traffic, parked in front of the Union Depot, handed a redcap porter the crumpled pasteboard and a half-dollar.

“At the check stand,” he said. “Make it snappy.”

And Paul Pry watched the face of the girl at his side to see if she was at all nonplussed at his failure to call for the suitcase in person. If she was, she failed to show it.

Paul Pry was red hot. It might well be that the sole function of this girl was to get him on the spot in front of the checking stand at the Union Depot.

Mugs Magoo walked past.

His glassy eyes flicked once toward the automobile, then turned away. He walked awkwardly, dressed in shabby clothes, his right arm gone at the shoulder.

At one time he had known every crook in the underworld, and his information was now hardly less complete. He had been “camera-eye” man for the metropolitan police. A political shake-up, an accident which cost him his right arm, and bad booze, had made him a human derelict selling pencils in the gutter.

Paul Pry had “discovered” him, and organized a strange partnership. For Mugs Magoo never forgot a name, a face or a connection. While Paul Pry was an opportunist de luxe who lived by his wits. And of late he had chosen to exercise those wits in a battle against Benjamin Franklin Gilvray, known to the police as Big Front Gilvray.

For years Big Front Gilvray had grown in power and prestige. The police knew him as a big man, too powerful to tackle, a gangster who was always in the background, letting his minions do the dirty work of murder and plunder. The police hated Gilvray, and they feared him.

To Paul Pry, Big Front Gilvray was merely the goose which laid his golden eggs.

The redcap returned with a suitcase, deposited it in the car. Paul Pry drove away into the stream of traffic.

“Gosh,” said the girl, “I can’t change in here. You’re sort of one of the family, but these windows are too wide. I don’t want to give the whole damned city a treat.”

Paul Pry nodded.

“We will go to a safe place,” he said.

And he meant what he said. He had no intention of letting this girl open that suitcase, take out a gun and pull the trigger.

He took her to a cheap hotel, engaged a suite of connecting rooms, took her up to those rooms, and closed the door while she engaged in the process of changing her clothes.

When she rejoined him in the bedroom, Paul Pry was ready for anything in the line of attack. But there was nothing. She smiled gratefully at him.

“Kid,” she said, giving him her hand, “here’s where we part. I ain’t asked you nothing about yourself, but I have an idea you’re a big shot on the lam, maybe from Chi. It’s easy enough to see that you’re about half sold on the idea that I am a lure to put you on the spot.

“But you’ve been a gent, and you’ve treated me white. I’m going out. I won’t see you again. Tonight at eleven o’clock I’ve got to go up against the most dangerous thing I’ve ever tackled. If you read in the papers about me being found with a lot of lead in me, remember that I was thinkin’ of you when I cashed in.

“You’ve given me a chance, and you’ve been on the up and up. Want to drive me downtown?”

He nodded. “You’ll stay here tonight?”

“If I come through alive.”

“Must you run into it?”

“Yes. I’m meeting a big shot of the Gilvray gang in the Mandarin Cafe. He’s got Room 13 reserved. If I can get what I want I’ll walk in and walk out inside of five minutes. If I ain’t out by then I’ll never come out. But I’ve got to go. That big shot has something I’ve got to have.”

Paul Pry lit a cigarette.

“Just you and he alone?” he asked.

“That’s the bargain. I wouldn’t deal any other way. It’s a long chance, but I’m taking it. Big Front Gilvray doesn’t waste any love on me. My man was a thorn in his flesh. He’d like to give me the works. But he needs me in his business. He’s pulling a job that they’ve got to have a moll on that knows the ropes. I’m elected. I can deliver the goods. The other molls can’t.