He pulled out a roll of bills, a wallet which contained papers, a notebook. Then he turned to Charley the Checker. Once more his hands darted through the pockets with uncanny skill and a swift precision which cut minutes to seconds, seconds to split fractions.
His collection of miscellaneous papers was augmented by another sheaf of currency, more letters and notebooks.
“Let’s go,” said Paul Pry.
Maude the Musher had fully adjusted herself to the situation by this time. The trap had failed, but the bait was still good. It remained for her to string Paul Pry along until he could once more be lured on a hot spot.
“Dearest!” she said, and clutched him to her.
Paul Pry fought loose from the embrace.
“We’ve no time to lose,” he said.
There was the sound of running feet in the corridor, the jabbering of many voices. A police whistle shrilled from the pavement. Paul Pry took the rolled currency which had come from Chick Bender, tossed it to one of the yellow men who led the procession.
“To pay for damage,” he said.
The beady black eyes fastened upon the denomination of the outer bill in that roll, and suddenly widened with glittering glee. The man’s swift fingers appraised the roll, called out sentences in the sing-song Cantonese dialect, and a lane opened through which Paul Pry and the girl travelled.
There were heavy feet on the stairs.
“Police no likum,” said Paul Pry.
The Chinaman who clutched the roll of bills nodded his head.
“Heavy savvy,” he said. “You come.”
He guided them through tortuous passages, up and down dark staircases until they finally reached the street at a point some two blocks from the Mandarin Cafe.
Paul Pry called a cab.
“Sweetheart!” said Maude the Musher, and burrowed into his embrace. “I’ve never known a man like you, never, never, never!”
Paul Pry patted her shoulder.
The taxi rumbled through traffic, found its way to the hotel where Paul Pry had engaged the suite of rooms. He and the girl went up in the rickety elevator. Paul Pry unlocked the door, stood back for the girl to enter. She walked into his room, switched on the light, smiled at him.
“Dearest,” she said, a catch in her voice, her eyes starry, “you’ve made me love you!”
Paul Pry shook his head.
“No. It’s just gratitude. Your nerves have been all unstrung. You wait until tomorrow and see how you feel.”
Her eyes blazed.
“You don’t want my love, then!” she stormed, and flounced into her own room, slamming the door, bolting it.
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.
4. “Stop That Woman!”
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.