Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

Paul Pry grinned at the opportune display of temper, tiptoed to the communicating door and listened.

She was telephoning, talking in low, cautious tones to someone on the other end of the line. And that someone seemed in quite a temper, to judge from the cooing explanations, the drooling promise which the girl was making.

Paul Pry smiled, walked back to his own room, turned out the lights, pulled back the bedcovers, took off his shoes, yawned, stretched.

In the other room Maude the Musher had finished her telephoning, and was listening, her ear to the door, her eyes gleaming with vengeful bloodlust that made them almost luminous in the darkness.

She heard the creak of the bedsprings as a tired man flung himself upon them. A little later there came the sound of rhythmic snores. Maude the Musher smiled, a smile that was utterly inscrutable. Slowly, deliberately she began to remove her clothes. The communicating door was locked only from her side.

But it was not until nearly three o’clock in the morning that she slowly turned the knob and pushed the door back upon noiseless hinges. Softly she walked into the room.

The light which seeped through the window made of her silk sheer night garment a billowy aura which served to mist the outline of her form without concealing it. She slowly made her way toward the bed, her eyes on the bulged covers.

When she came closer she started to croon.

“Dearest, you risked your life for me. Please don’t think me ungrateful. I would do anything for you, anything to get you what you deserve, you—”

And, having tiptoed to within springing distance, she drew a gleaming knife from behind her back, made a leap, and finished the sentence with a burst of foul profanity which accompanied the plunging knife.

For a long moment she straddled the hump in the bed, smothering it in an embrace of death, just as a midnight owl smothers the fugitive mouse with his enfolding wings.

Then the girl jumped back with an oath of surprise. She ripped away the bedcovers.

There was nothing beneath them but a wadded blanket or two and a pillow. The knife had ripped its way into the pillow, and white feathers were sifting over the bed, drifting through the air.

Paul Pry sat in his apartment, his brows level in concentration. In his hand he held a typewritten copy of a notice which had evidently been prepared and delivered by the Gilvray gang. Pry had taken it from Chick Bender’s wallet.

It related to the arrival of a messenger from a large corporation that had sold an entire bond issue of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a local banking concern.

The corporation, it seemed, having issued the bonds in small denominational amounts, having made each one negotiable upon the theory that the issue would find its way into the hands of the small investor, now found that a bank was willing to take the entire amount.

A special messenger, carrying the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in negotiable bonds, was due to arrive at the Union Depot the next evening at precisely 6.13.

The typewritten instructions showed the utter thoroughness with which the organization of Big Front Gilvray functioned. Not only had all of the facts concerning the shipment of bonds been ascertained, but the spies of the organization had even gone so far as to secure a picture of the messenger.

A copy of that picture was appended to the typewritten statement. It showed a youngish man with alert eyes, a small mouth, and hair that was slicked back in the polished symmetry of perfumed splendour.

But the typewritten statement confined itself to a description of the young man and the suitcase. It said nothing concerning a modus operandi by which the bonds were to be transferred from messenger to gangster.

And Paul Pry was particularly interested in that. For, as has been mentioned, Paul Pry, dapper, debonair, very fast on his feet, lived entirely by his wits. His living was, strictly speaking, within the law, for he specialized upon the recovery of stolen property for a reward.

The grand total of those rewards during the past twelve months had run into a very pretty figure. And the fact that Big Front Gilvray had been the indirect means of collecting these rewards had caused Paul Pry to regard the “big shot” as the goose who laid his golden eggs, had caused Gilvray to regard Paul Pry as a young man who must be placed upon a hot spot.

So Paul Pry sat and studied the typewritten statement through the calm, still hours of the night. He had certain facts to work upon, and only certain facts.

Maude the Musher, with her penchant for underclothed rescues, was in town. Her man, Charley the Checker, was running the checking stand at the Union Depot. The purchase of that checking stand must have cost a pretty penny, and, in view of the discovery that a young man was bringing three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in negotiable bonds at 6.13 in the evening to the Union Depot, that purchase seemed significant.

Paul Pry smoked several cigarettes over the problem. At the end of that time he went to bed. The solution seemed just out of his mental reach, like a dangling Hallowe’en apple. It was hardly likely that a young man would check a suitcase with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bonds at a checking station. On the other hand, it was hardly possible that the gang of Big Front Gilvray would have become interested in that checking station unless it were to be more or less intimately associated with the suitcase containing the bonds.

In the end, Paul Pry drifted off to sleep, determined to play cards as they came to his hand without worrying too much in advance about what plans or what cards the other man might hold. Which is, after all, a pretty good way to gamble, or to live.

The 6.13 Cannonball Express rumbled into the Union Depot exactly on time to the minute. The exit lane for passengers was lined with those who came to meet incoming friends, relatives or sweethearts.

Paul Pry was ensconced atop a girder where he was apparently inspecting a chipped place in the marble pillar. He wore white overalls, held a small trowel in his hand, and was utterly ignored by the stream of human traffic which milled beneath him.

The first of the passengers from the 6.13 began to arrive.

An athletic man, his face beaming in anticipation, strode through the gates, looked at the lined faces of those who waited in parallel rows. A young woman thrust her way out into the passageway. He uttered a choked exclamation, and they clinched each other tightly.

About them swirled other passengers. Groups were formed and swept about. Red-capped porters pushed carts loaded with stacked baggage.

Paul Pry kept his eyes upon the athletic-looking young man who had been the first up the exit lane. For the girl who had met him with such wild affection, who had brought that choked exclamation to his eager lips, was none other than Maude Ambrose, from Chicago, known as Maude the Musher.

She was attired in a fur coat which came a trifle below her knees, yet did not interfere with a vision of silken contours which stretched smoothly from ankle to knee.

They were within a few feet of the checking stand where the gangster known as Charley the Checker, a purple welt across his forehead, his eyes a little cloudy with the after-effects of a concussion, solicited travellers to deposit their suitcases.

Directly behind Charley the Checker, within three feet of the brass-topped counter along which suitcases were slid by those desiring to check them, was a shelf upon which some three dozen suitcases were stacked, side by side. They were each placed on end, their handles to the front, and pasteboard tickets dangled from those handles.

Paul Pry noticed that there was one vacant space almost in the centre of those suitcases. He watched and waited.