Right at present he was taking the part of a cripple, selling pencils. His hat, half filled with pencils, and with just a few coins in the bottom, was balanced on the palm of his left hand. His face was covered with a two days’ growth of greyish stubble, and his glassy eyes seemed utterly uninterested in life.
But, as a matter of fact, Mugs Magoo catalogued the underworld as it flowed past, on the side street that was to the gangster what Wall Street was to the financier. And Mugs’ hand, making signals with the hat, checked off the gangsters as they passed and relayed the information to Paul Pry.
The danger signals increased in intensity.
But Paul Pry was curious. His eyes were diamond hard, and there was a taut alertness about his well-knit figure that showed he had seen and interpreted the signal. Otherwise he might have been merely a well-dressed lounger, idling away the late evening on the city’s streets.
A big car rolled around the corner, purred smoothly to the kerb, on the same side as that occupied by Paul Pry. The door opened, and a woman stepped to the pavement.
Paul Pry made his living by his wits. He loved excitement, and he had no mental perspective when it came to courting danger. Lately he had made his money, and a very great deal of money, through the simple process of shaking down gangsters, matching his wits against their brute force.
And Paul Pry had learned from bitter experience that gangsters are very resentful indeed, and wont to show their resentment with pellets which are belched from a machine gun. He had also learned that beautiful women are, by very virtue of their beauty, likely to prove exceedingly false and dangerous.
But none of those facts dimmed in the least Paul Pry’s appreciation of beauty. Nor did the danger curb his unique activities. So far, his agile wits had always kept him at least one jump ahead of those gangsters who wanted to remove him from the trials and tribulations of an unkind, but very interesting world.
This woman was particularly beautiful. But her beauty had a suggestion of smooth hardness about it, like the polished surface of a diamond. She was clad in evening gown and a white fur coat that should have made her seem like a pure snowflake. In reality, she resembled an icicle, glitteringly hard and utterly cold, despite the beautiful figure, the graceful curve of the chin, and the profile which might have been chiselled from the finest marble by the most skilled artist.
Paul Pry let his eyes slither over to the shadows across the street where Mugs Magoo crouched in watchful waiting.
Mugs had ceased to move his hat. The danger sign was discontinued. Either the danger had passed, or else it was too late for a warning to do any good.
The woman stared at Paul Pry, and there was nothing of virginal innocence in that stare. On the other hand, it was not the stare of one who wishes to make an acquaintance. It was merely that she wished to look at Paul Pry for reasons of her own, and she looked at him without seeking to disguise the fact.
The woman was hardly the type to drive an automobile. Her expensive clothes, the pride of her bearing, created an impression of surroundings that should have included a liveried chauffeur, a big limousine, an expensive apartment.
Yet she had been the one who had piloted the car, and the car was not a limousine. It was big and powerful, but was an open touring car with side curtains, partially concealing the back.
The woman’s eyes glittered over the face of Paul Pry. Then she relaxed. A certain tension which had held her rigid seemed to have dissolved. The look of hardness vanished from her face. She became a creature of softly seductive curves, of ravishing beauty, and she moved toward the door which was at the rear of the touring car with the grace of a professional dancer crossing the stage.
Her arm shot out. The gloved hand opened the door. The interior of the car seemed empty.
“O.K., Bill,” she said.
The plush robe on the floor of the car stirred into life. A casual observer would, perhaps, have expected some huge dog to answer the call and emerge from beneath the lap robe.
But it was no dog that shook off the folds of the robe and came out into the tang of the night air.
It was a man.
The man wore evening clothes. Someone had smashed a terrific blow on his nose; the eyes were swollen; the front of the starched shirt and the waistcoat showed plainly the stains of crimson which had spouted from the nose.
The coat was ripped. A pocket had been literally torn out, and was dangling from the threads which bound the bottom of the pocket to the coat. One of the silk lapels was ripped half away. There was no hat. The hair was matted, and the swollen nose made breathing through the mouth a necessity.
He was undignified as he crawled out of the shelter of the robe, staggered to the pavement. The woman extended a solicitous hand to his arm.
What followed came with that overlapping swiftness of events which is as impossible to follow in detail as the well-organized offensive of a well-drilled football team, sweeping down the field in a bewildering change of positions, executed at top speed.
Doorways opened, and men came out of the darkness, running low. The street lights glinted from the steel weapons. Yet no shots were fired.
One of the men swung a swift arm, and the blackjack “kerthunked” on the matted hair of the individual who had already seen such rough usage.
Another man jumped behind him, was ready to receive the unconscious form as it slumped backward and down.
Another swung a vicious blackjack at the woman’s head. She, too, would have been unconscious but for one thing, and that one thing was Paul Pry.
Paul Pry carried a cane, which, to the casual eye, was merely a polished bit of wood. Only the trained observer would have noticed that that which seemed to be wood was not wood at all, but steel painted to resemble polished wood. That steel was very thin, and furnished the sheath for a tempered blade of finest steel which was attached to the handle of the cane.
It was, in the hands of a trained fencer, a highly efficient weapon, and Paul Pry was adept in its use. His right hand jerked out the naked steel of the blade.
The lights glinted from it as it darted forward, as smoothly rapid as the tongue of a snake. The man who was swinging the blackjack at the woman’s skull jumped back with a scream. The cold steel had flicked out and bit deep into the shoulder muscles. The swinging arm was deflected, and the blackjack whizzed down in a harmless swing.
A car came around the corner, driven in second gear, the tortured tyres shrieking their protest as they skidded over the pavement. Two men turned with oaths to Paul Pry.
But there were no shots fired. For some reason, the assailants seemed to require absolute silence so far as their operations were concerned. It was an affair of steel and blackjacks. The glittering knives swept in wicked thrusts, and the men swung their blackjacks. But Paul Pry, standing with his left arm thrown about the woman, holding her closely to him, swung his blade in a flickering arc of deadly speed.
The steel flecked in and out forming a barrier of perfect defence, biting once in a while into the bodies of the attackers.
The woman swung. Her right hand came out from beneath the fur of the coat. There was a pearl-handled, nickelled automatic smuggled in the palm.
“I’ll shoot, you rats!” she blazed.
The defence was too strong. The attackers jumped back. There was a muffled command.
“He’s in the car,” said someone.
“O.K., boys,” rasped a voice. “Leave the—”
And the epithet which he used to describe the woman was one which was usually reserved for masculine ears.
The woman broke away from Paul Pry’s grasp.
“Give him back! Give him back!” she screamed.
But the figures, still moving with well-disciplined efficiency of motion, had jumped into the purring automobile which had dashed to the kerb. Doors slammed. The woman’s gun blazed.