Mugs Magoo squirmed under the accusation of the tone.
“This here’s the last glass I’m drinkin’ until night,” he explained.
Paul Pry lit a cigarette.
“It’s your own business, Mugs,” he said. “I’m not the type to attempt to impose my will upon my fellow man, only you’ve got to keep fit if you’re going to work with me. I can’t use a brain that’s muddled in alcohol.”
Mugs Magoo laughed, but the laugh was nervous.
“Forget it. My brain uses alcohol as lubricatin’ oil. What’s on your mind, chief?”
“The gangster, who was he?”
Mugs Magoo finished the last drop in the glass, looked longingly at the bottle, then set the glass down on the table.
“Funny guy. Ain’t seen him for six years, but I heard he was with Gilvray now. He’s known as ‘Double’ Phil Delano. Used to be an actor, and a good one, too. He can double for anybody that’s anywhere near his size and build; an expert with the makeup and such stuff.
“They use him when they want an alibi. Double Phil Delano makes up as the guy he wants to alibi and sticks around. The guy goes to the restaurant he’s picked, speaks to all of his friends, kids a couple of dames along, and then settles down to some steady drinking.
“After a while he goes to the dressing-room and slips out. Double Phil Delano slips in and takes the place his alibi has just vacated. He’s a little slopped with drink, but quiet and not making a nuisance out of himself. Everybody sees him. He sits there and laps up a little booze and kills time until he gets a signal.
“Then he goes to the dressing-room. His alibi slips in, has a few more drinks, and then goes and talks with the proprietor or somebody and maybe drops his watch and busts it. That helps to fix the time.
“Later on when the bulls start prodding around on the back trail of the suspect they find an iron-clad alibi. That’s the racket of Double Phil Delano. He rakes down big money understudying the crooks that want to have things go just so.
“He was in disguise today. He was holdin’ his mouth funny, and he had a dignified expression on his map, but he’s got a little finger broken on his left hand. It’s a funny break. Once you’ve seen it you won’t forget it. I spotted that finger first. But I had to look a second time to make sure it was Phil.”
Mugs Magoo reached for the empty glass, then let his hand stop halfway to the table.
“Aw shucks!” he muttered thickly.
Paul Pry slitted his eyes into glittering concentration.
“Know the man he was shadowing?”
“Never saw him before, chief.”
Paul Pry nodded, beat upon the arm of his chair with his fingertips, then arose and crossed the room to a closet. The glass door of this closet showed an interior filled with drums. There were cannibal tribe drums, war drums, Indian ceremonial drums, snare drums and tom-toms. They hung from the walls of the closet in profusion.
Paul Pry selected a ceremonial drum of the South Seas. It was made of hide stretched across hollowed bamboo. Returning to his chair, he started a soft beating upon the taut surface of dried skin.
The apartment seemed fairly filled with the resulting noise, a throbbing sound that entered the pulses of the blood, boomed in the brain, rumbled back upon the ears from the walls of the apartment in maddening sound cadences.
“For the love o’ Mike!” exclaimed Mugs Magoo, moving restlessly in his chair. “That drum always gives me the willies. It makes my blood jump.”
Paul Pry nodded dreamily.
“It would. It’s the primitive song of power, of lust, of life. You can almost hear the stamping of bare feet, the cries of the women. It reminds me of a blazing fire, a circle of warriors, dancing plumes, shaking spears, pounding feet. And under it all, the sound of the drum, a background of primitive noise. Listen to it, Mugs!”
Boom... boom... boom.
Mugs Magoo got up from his chair.
“You hypnotize yourself with them drums, chief. It’s a habit. You’d better cut it out.”
Paul Pry shook his head dreamily.
“No. It helps my nerves. Go out to 5793 Longacres Drive and find out who owns the place. Tell ’em you’re from the water company. Get all the information you can. Take cabs in both directions and make it snappy. I have an idea we’ll have to use a little speed on this job.”
Mugs Magoo looked longingly at the whiskey bottle.
“Of course, if I’m going out—”
Paul Pry ceased his drumming to glare at the cripple.
“You’d better get started,” he finished for the hesitant Mugs.
“Yessir,” remarked Mugs Magoo, lurched to his feet, took his hat and was gone.
Behind him, Paul Pry drummed out sound cadences that reverberated through the apartment, low booming sounds that seemed almost without point of origin.
He was still in the same chair when Mugs returned. He had ceased to drum, but his eyes were pinpoints of concentration, and there was a pencil and a bit of paper in his hand.
He grinned at Mugs.
“Before you say a word, Mugs, I want to know if the man is the butler. If he is, I know the answer.”
Mugs Magoo’s glassy eyes widened in surprise.
“Sure he’s the butler, guy by the name o’ Pete Filbert, an’ the chap that owns the house is Rodney Goldcrest. They’re lousy with coin. The butler’s the last word. The folks are newly rich, awful rich an’ awful new.”
Paul Pry’s smile became a grin.
“Ah,” he said, and there was a purring undertone to his voice like that of a big tiger stalking its prey.
“You goin’ to tie into Big Front Gilvray again, chief?”
“Certainly, why?”
“It ain’t healthy. Gilvray’s a big-time guy. I’m tellin’ you, he’s made monkeys out of the police. They never can get anything on him, and he’s working all the time.”
“Well, what about it, Mugs?”
“Nothin’. Only I’d concentrate on somebody else for a while. Big Front Gilvray is dynamite.”
Paul Pry leaned forward and jabbed his forefinger at the chest of Mugs Magoo.
“Know what he is? He’s a crook. He has the name B F Gilvray, and the B F stands for Benjamin Franklin. It’s a hot note when a gangster sports the name of Benjamin Franklin on his nameplate. The boys call him Big Front, and he lives up to the name. By the time I get done with him, he won’t have any big front. I’m going to ride that man clean out of business. If the police can’t reach him, I can. He’s my goose that’s laying the golden egg. His crimes have netted me thousands of dollars in the last three months, and they’re going to net me more.”
Mugs Magoo shook his head.
“He’s too big, boss,” he warned. “You’ll be stretched out on a marble slab with weights on your eyelids.”
Paul Pry chuckled.
“Well, it’s a fair fight,” he said. Then he took his hat and stick and went out.
Hardly had the door closed than Mugs Magoo reached for the whiskey bottle and tilted it to his lips. Then, with a sigh of content, he dropped back into the cushioned chair and relaxed.
It was early in the evening when the ringing of the telephone aroused him from the sleep into which he had dropped. Paul Pry’s voice answered his hello.
“Hello, Mugs. Are you sober?”
Mugs Magoo rubbed his sleep-swollen eyes. Blinking in the light of the reading lamp, he glanced at the empty whiskey bottle, and grunted his reply.
“I ain’t been sober for seven years. Why should I celebrate now?”
“Are you pickled?”
“Son, I can’t get pickled. I get just so much inside of me, an’ then the blamed stuff evaporates through the pores of my skin as fast as I pour it in. Was there somethin’ I could do? I’m just right.”
“Yes,” said Paul Pry. “Come to the Bargemore Hotel and ask for George Crosby.” And the telephone receiver at the other end of the line clicked into place.