Paul Pry smiled.
“And why should I do that, inspector?”
“It would bust up his gang, relieve you of the certain death that’s hanging over your head.”
Paul Pry laughed outright.
“And kill the goosie that lays such delightful golden eggs for me — for us! Oh, no, inspector. I couldn’t think of it. By the way, inspector, I understand the corporation that lost the bonds has offered twenty thousand dollars for their return. Is that right?”
Oakley grunted.
“Yeah. They’ll probably be stuck for the whole issue if they don’t get ’em back, but they’re so tight they only offer twenty thousand. Maybe there’s a legal question about delivery. I don’t know. I understand the lawyers are in a snarl over it. It seems that if the messenger who was robbed was a messenger of the bank that’s buying the bonds there was a delivery and the bonds, being negotiable, can be cashed as against the company. If the messenger was in the employ of the company there wasn’t any delivery, or some such thing. It’s too fine-spun for me.”
Paul Pry extended a tapering hand, held his cigarette over the ashtray, flipped off the ash with a little finger that gave just the right thrust to drop the ashes in a pile in the centre of the tray.
“Suppose we split that reward fifty-fifty?”
Inspector Oakley’s cigar sagged as his lower jaw dropped in surprise.
“You’ve got ’em?”
“Oh no. I wouldn’t have them, but my underground intelligence department advises me that the suitcase containing them has been checked into a certain checking stand in one of the large department stores here in the city.
“I could advise you of the name of that store. I might even advise you of the number of the ticket. Then you could recover the bonds, announce that the police had ‘acted upon a tip received from the underworld through the lips of a stool pigeon, swooped down and recovered the bonds, and the culprit had escaped.’ Of course, you could take considerable credit — and ten thousand dollars in cold cash. That’s rather a pretty addition to the pile of reward money you’ve been collecting.
“Naturally, I’d want my name kept out of it. It wouldn’t do to have the bulk of the police force watching me with suspicion.”
Inspector Oakley took a deep breath. His eyes glittered with avarice.
“This is something like! A nice clean job. I could pull that without having so damned many questions asked. Getting some of the swag you’ve tipped me off to has looked pretty raw and I’ve had to make a pay-off on some of my reward split; but this is slick and clean.”
Paul Pry smiled.
“Yes, inspector, you’re right. This is slick and clean. The location of the suitcase will be telephoned to you anonymously at precisely three minutes after midnight tonight. You can still make the morning papers with it.”
“Why at three minutes after midnight?” asked Inspector Oakley.
“So that you can have a witness or two present to verify your statement that the information was telephoned in from an undercover man or a stool pigeon, as you may prefer to make the explanation.”
Inspector Oakley shook hands.
Benjamin Franklin Gilvray occupied rather a pretentious dwelling in the more or less exclusive residential district. A well-kept lawn surrounded his house. The arch-gangster found that it was well to keep up a front, particularly during these troubled times when so many of his deals went sour.
He lay in his soft bed, covered by blankets of the most virgin wool, his pillow a mass of wrinkles where he had been tossing around and turning during the night. The morning sun was seeping in through the windows.
Big Front Gilvray had not slept well.
A hoarse combination of sound came from the front of the house. He waited for silence, tried to doze off again, but the sound was repeated.
He arose angrily, and flung up the curtain.
What the hell was the matter with the boys that they let things like this happen? They knew he wanted silence.
He looked out into the pale sunlight and saw a goose, tethered with a string to a peg driven in the lawn. The goose was strutting about with a neck crooked in suspicious uncertainty, a chest thrown well out, and a tail that wiggled from side to side with every web-footed stride.
To the neck of the goose was attached a metal band and from this band dangled a piece of paper.
Big Front Gilvray sounded the alarm.
Two choppers swung machine guns into place. The goose might or might not be a trap. He might carry an infernal machine for all they knew. The machine guns cut loose.
Bits of sod and dirt flew up from the lawn about the tethered goose. Then, as the guns centred, there was a burst of feathers, and the bird dropped into a limp heap.
Covered by one of the machine guns, a gangster sprinted out on the lawn, retrieved the dead bird, brought it into the house.
It was an ordinary goose. About its neck, attached to the metal band, was a bit of paper upon which was the message Big Front Gilvray had come to hate with a bitter hatred that transformed him from man to savage.
DEAR GOOSIE. THANKS FOR ANOTHER GOLDEN EGG.
The message was signed with two initials — P. P.
And the morning paper which reposed on the front porch of the big mansion carried screaming headlines announcing that Inspector Oakley would collect a twenty thousand dollar reward for the recovery of a third of a million dollars in negotiable bonds.
Big Front Gilvray, his anger transcending the bounds of sanity, grabbed the torn, bloody carcass of the bird and flung it across the room. It thudded to the wall with a splash of red, and a fluttering shower of feathers drifted through the room.
Big Front Gilvray tore the paper into small bits and stamped upon them. His gangsters looked at one another in consternation. The chief was usually so suavely certain of himself that to see him like this caused them to lose confidence and respect.
“Get that damned dude. Get him on the spot!” yelled Big Front Gilvray.
But Paul Pry, peacefully sleeping, assured that his bank account would be augmented by another ten thousand dollars, was beyond being troubled by the rumbled threats of the gangster.
As Inspector Oakley had so aptly remarked, the deal was “slick and clean”.
Hell’s Danger Signal
Against gangdom’s slickest pair “Mugs” Magoo had warned him, yet deliberately Paul Pry had laid his plans. Did he have nine lives, nine charmed lives that he dared disregard all warning — dared overstep hell’s danger signal unafraid?
1
Paul Pry noticed that the street seemed strangely deserted, and attributed the fact to a mere temporary lull in traffic.
He glanced at the opposite sidewalk where “Mugs” Magoo, ex-camera-eye man for the metropolitan police, was crouched against the wall of a bank building.
Mugs Magoo was waving his hand in a series of slow circles. That was the signal of danger — the danger sign that Paul Pry had instructed his lieutenant was to be used only in the event circumstances necessitated a hasty retreat.
It would, of course, have been the part of wisdom to have heeded that signal, for Mugs Magoo knew the underworld as perhaps no other living mortal. For years he had been on the force, merely tabulating crooks, filing their faces away in that card-index memory of his. Then a political upheaval had lost him his job; an accident had lost him his right arm at the shoulder; and, he had become a drifter.