Эрл Гарднер - The Adventures of Paul Pry

She nodded, then said, after a minute, in a dull, hopeless tone: “But it’s no use now. We’re both going to die. You don’t know him. You don’t know how absolutely, unutterably ruthless, how unspeakably cruel...”

Paul Pry moved swiftly. He took the dressing table, tilted it to a sharp angle, pulled open one of the drawers, inserted the revolver and pulled the trigger.

The gun gave forth a muffled boom.

Paul Pry toppled the dressing table to the floor. It fell with a bang which shook the walls.

Paul Pry, stepping back, tossed the useless gun to the floor, took the razor-keen blade of his sword cane from its scabbard, held himself flat against the wall, just to one side of the door, so that the opening door would serve to conceal him from who entered the room.

There was a period of silence.

Thelma put her head in her hands and started to cry.

Slowly, the knob on the door rattled into motion. The latch clicked; the door opened slowly. Two men entered the room. Paul Pry could hear the sounds of their shuffling feet, but could not see them.

A masculine voice said: “Where is he, Thelma?”

The sobbing girl said nothing, but kept her face in her hands, sobbing hopelessly.

The men moved further into the room. One of them walked toward her.

Paul Pry took a deep breath and kicked the door shut.

Two pairs of startled eyes stared at him. One of the men was the man who had been on guard at the door of the speakeasy. The other was a man Paul Pry had never seen before — a well-dressed man with curly, black hair, eyes that glinted with dark fire. He had a saturnine cast to his countenance, and his face seemed to radiate a sort of hypnotic power.

Both men had guns which dangled from their hands.

The man who had guarded the door of the speakeasy was nearest to Paul Pry. He raised his gun.

Paul Pry lunged forward. The slender blade of his sword cane, appearing hardly stronger than a long darning needle, flicked out like the tongue of a snake. The glittering steel embedded itself in the left side of the man’s chest.

The man wilted into lifelessness. Blood spurted along the stained steel of the cane as Paul Pry whipped it out and whirled.

The man with the dark, curly hair fired. The bullet clipped past Paul Pry’s body so close that it caught the folds of his coat, tugging and ripping at the garment as though some invisible hand had suddenly snatched at the cloth.

Paul Pry’s slender steel flicked out and down. The razor-keen edge cut the tendons on the back of the man’s right hand. The nerveless fingers dropped the gun to the floor.

With an oath, he jumped back, flung his left hand under the folds of his coat, whipped out a long-bladed knife.

Paul Pry lunged once more. The man parried the lunge with his knife. Steel grated on steel.

Paul Pry’s light blade was turned aside by the heavy knife. The momentum of Pry’s lunge carried him forward. The dark-haired man laughed sardonically as he turned the point of the knife toward Paul Pry’s throat.

But Paul Pry managed, by a superhuman effort, to catch himself just as he seemed on the point of impaling his throat on the knife. His adversary recognized too late that he had lost the advantage. He thrust outward with the knife, but his left hand made the thrust awkward and ill-timed. Paul Pry jumped back from the thrust. Once more the point of his sword cane was flickering in front of him, a glittering menace of steel which moved swiftly.

“So,” he said, “you know how to fence?”

The dark-haired man held the heavy knife in readiness to parry the next thrust. “Yes,” he said, “I know how to fence far better than you, my friend.”

“And I suppose,” said Paul Pry, “that is the knife which accounted for the men whose lips were sewed together.”

“Just a little trade mark of mine,” admitted the man with the knife. “When I leave here, your lips and Thelma’s lips will be sewed in the same manner. I’ll drop your bodies...”

Paul Pry moved with bewildering swiftness. The point of his narrow steel blade darted forward.

The man flung the knife into a position to parry the thrust. “Clumsy,” he said.

But Paul Pry’s wrist deflected the point at just the proper moment to slide the slender steel just inside the blade of the heavy knife.

The dark-haired man had time to register an expression of bewildered consternation. Then Pry’s flicking bodkin buried itself in his heart, and his face ceased to show any expression whatever.

Mugs Magoo stared with wide eyes at Paul Pry as he entered the apartment. “Say something,” he pleaded.

Paul Pry smiled, took off his hat and coat.

“What shall I say?”

“Anything,” Mugs Magoo said, “just so I can tell that your lips aren’t stuck together with cross-stitches.”

Paul Pry took a cigarette case from his pocket, took out a cigarette and inspected the end critically. “Well, Mugs,” he said, “suppose I smoke? How would that be?”

“That’d be all right,” said Mugs. “Where were you last night?”

“Oh, just around doing things,” said Paul Pry. “I had a couple of young women I had to see off on a plane.”

“Good-looking?” asked Mugs Magoo.

“Well,” said Paul Pry, “they had mighty fine figures, and if they hadn’t been so badly frightened they’d have been pretty good lookers.”

“And then what did you do with the early part of the morning?”

“I had to cash a cheque,” said Paul Pry.

“I thought you cashed that one yesterday.”

“I did, Mugs, but you see, there was a misunderstanding about the cheque that I left in its place, so Mr. Hammond sent another cheque for twenty-five thousand to the same party at General Delivery.”

“And why didn’t the party get that one?” asked Mugs Magoo.

Paul Pry sighed. “That,” he said, “is rather a long story.”

Eva Bentley pushed open the door of the glass compartment where she had been taking down the radio calls. “There’s a lot of hot stuff coming in over the radio,” she said, “about this cross-stitch murder.”

Paul Pry puffed complacently on his cigarette. “What is it?” he said. “Can you tell me what’s happening?”

“Yes,” she said. “There’s a broadcast out for the apprehension of two women. One of them is Ellen Tracy and the other is Thelma Peters. They were employed as entertainers and floor girls in a downtown speakeasy.”

Paul Pry’s face showed no expression other than a mild curiosity. “Indeed?” he said. “And just what have these two young ladies been doing?”

“The police think,” she said, “that they can give valuable information about the cross-stitch murderer. In fact, they think the girls might have been implicated in the murders — perhaps unwillingly.”

“And what,” asked Paul Pry, with that same expression of polite curiosity in his face, “gives the police that impression?”

“Because,” said Eva Bentley, “the police raided the speakeasy on a tip this morning about ten o’clock. They found two bodies in the dressing-room which had been occupied by Thelma Peters. The men had evidently fought with a knife and pistol, and there may have been another man present in the room. In fact, the police think there was.

“On one of the bodies the police found a surgeon’s needle and some thread of exactly the same kind which was used in making the cross-stitches on the lips of the murder victims. The police started an investigation and are pretty well satisfied the man is the cross-stitch murderer. They found evidence which tied him up with a wholesale murder plot. It seems that he’d been collecting money from half a dozen different millionaires, threatening to murder them if they gave the police any information whatever. The two people who were killed were those who had given the police information, but the cross-stitch murderer figured that he’d kill a couple of millionaires anyway, in order to get the newspaper notoriety which would strike terror into the hearts of his proposed victims.”