Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

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.

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.

All right, Lola, we’ve got Bill Sacanoni. He goes for a ride unless we get what we want and get it in a hurry. First, we want ten grand stuck in a bag and delivered at the place we told you. Second, we want George Inman put on the spot. You’ve stuck up for him and shielded him long enough. We know all about him. You’ve got until daylight to do your stuff. Then Bill gets his. We know you can get the coin, but we want to be sure about Inman.

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!”