Paul Pry chuckled. Things were shaping up now. He knew now why the girl had purchased the incense burner; he knew the reason for that fumbling under the towel. She must have slipped her receipt for the incense burner into Bergen’s wallet to take the place of the one she stole from Bergen, which he now held in his hand.
Paul Pry jumped into his car, drove away. He stopped in front of the gift shop where the girl had selected the present of an incense burner and ordered it packed for shipping. He strolled in.
Paul Pry also selected an incense burner. He, too, expressed some concern over the construction, wondered whether it would stand shipping, and gave instructions that it was to be packed so that a safe delivery could be guaranteed.
He personally supervised the packing, the wrapping, then paid for the article and left the store. He went at once to the Interurban Motor Express Company and shipped the parcel to Herbert Dangerfield at Midland, and he gave the name of the shipper as Samuel Bergen.
He pocketed the original and one copy of the bill of lading which had been given him, along with the one he had wheedled out of the manicurist. Then he strolled from the express office and contemplated the afternoon crowds which milled about the street. There was in his eye the calm tranquillity of one who is at peace with the world, having performed a task well.
He got in his car, drove to the wholesale jewellery store of R. C. Fenniman.
“I wish to see Mr. Fenniman at once upon a matter of the most urgent importance,” he told the girl at the wicketed window.
She shook her head.
“He said he didn’t want to be disturbed this aft’noon. He’s ’n conference.”
Paul Pry smiled, a patronizing smile of self-assurance.
“Tell him that I am waiting to save him from a big loss and that he has just three minutes to make up his mind whether he wants to see me or not.”
The girl nodded, vanished, impressed with something in Paul’s manner.
And R. C. Fenniman had exactly two minutes and ten seconds to spare out of the three minute limit when the girl returned and nodded.
“Come this way.”
She led the visitor past a row of showcases, past locked safes, past desks where men looked up curiously. A man gave an exclamation, got to his feet.
It was Samuel Bergen, freshly shaved and manicured.
“How’d you make out?”
Paul Pry grinned.
“Fine. Got a nice settlement, thanks to you. Had your card and thought, I’d drop in and see your boss — theft insurance, merchants’ protection, that’s my line.”
Bergen recoiled and paled.
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him you came here because of me!”
Paul let his face lengthen.
“Gee, I thought that’d make a good opening.”
“Lord, man! You don’t know the boss,” groaned Bergen.
“All right, old chap, all right,” agreed Paul. “I won’t say a word. If you should happen in the room while I’m there don’t even let on that you ever saw me before. I’ll stand back of you. You sure backed me up — All right, young lady, coming. Thought I knew this gentleman, but it’s a mistake. He just reminded me of someone else I knew.”
And Paul Pry turned to the left, went through the door the girl was holding open.
A glum individual with the folded, seamed face of a dyspeptic regarded Pry with dour appraisal.
“What do you want?”
Paul sat down, crossed his legs, gave some concern to the crease in his trousers, took a cigarette from his case, lit it, blew out a cloud of smoke, grinned.
“You’re going to be robbed,” he said.
The lean face twisted in some form of emotion. The red-rimmed eyes blinked. The lips twitched.
“Bah!” said the man, and the sour odour of his breath poisoned the air of the office, came in a nauseating wave to the nostrils of Paul Pry.
Pry shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m representing a new service to merchants. I can prevent certain crimes. There’s a crime contemplated against your property, and I have the power to prevent that crime.”
The sour individual gulped.
“Get out!”
“Come, come. Not so fast. How about a certain shipment you made earlier in the afternoon, a shipment to a chap by the name of Dangerfield? Rather valuable, wasn’t it?”
The man scraped back his chair, got his feet in under him, uncoiled his thin length and glowered from red-rimmed eyes. Then his finger jabbed a button.
Samuel Bergen thrust a rather alarmed face into the room.
“Bergen,” rasped the man, “you sent that shipment to Dangerfield?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got the receipt?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Le’me see it.”
“I put it in the file. I’ll have to get it.”
“All right. Get it.”
The man vanished silently, deferentially.
Paul Pry grinned.
“Rather a joke if that shipment got stolen. Valuable?”
“Of course it’s valuable. And it’s not going to get stolen.”
“No?”
“No. Of course not. Dangerfield’s got a first-class place. His credit’s A-1. He does the cream of the business at Midland. When he says he wants something, he gets it. He telephoned that order in and mentioned the time and the way he wanted it shipped. He’s responsible from the minute we get the bill of lading. We ship our stuff free on board shipping point.”
The door opened. Samuel Bergen was back with a duplicate copy of a bill of lading. In his hand was a letter and an original bill of lading.
“Here you are, sir.”
“Uh, huh.”
Fenniman glowered at the documents.
“Perhaps, if you were to call Dangerfield on the phone, you’d find out the order was a fake,” suggested Paul Pry. “Not, of course, that I’m given to making suggestions gratuitously, but just to show you how complete my system of information is.”
R. C. Fenniman was on his feet, his sallow skin purpled with rage. The little eyes over their folds of puffed flesh glared the bitter rage of the sickly, the lips quivered with emotion.
“Get out of here. Get out before I call the police. You’ve got a hell of a crust telling me how to run my business! I should run up long-distance calls and offend a customer just so you can make a smart aleck out of yourself. Get on your way.”
Paul Pry smiled enigmatically. He picked up his stick, adjusted his tie, took his hat, and bowed low.
“And if you should come to the conclusion that you’re wrong, if it should appear that I was right, just put an ad in the personal column of The Examiner, mentioning the amount of the reward you’ll pay for the return of the stolen property. I always prefer to prevent crime for a consideration. If I can’t do that I can, at least, restore stolen property — for a larger consideration. Good day to you, Mr. Fenniman, and if I might make the suggestion, a little pepsin for the stomach. And try not to get in a rage within two hours of eating. It interferes with the digestion. You’ll find some excellent pepsin preparations—”
With an inarticulate roar the thin man sprang at the door. Paul Pry, his hand on the knob, casually pulled it shut and left the wholesale jeweller quivering his indignation before the blank surface of a closed door.
Paul Pry went directly to the office of the Interurban Motor Express Company.
“I shipped a package earlier in the day,” he confided to the clerk. “Here’s the bill of lading.” He handed the clerk the receipt the manicurist had lifted from Bergen’s wallet, and which he had gained possession of under such unusual circumstances. “Please cancel the shipment if it hasn’t gone out yet.”
“We’ll have to make a handling charge,” the clerk warned.
Paul Pry nodded smilingly.
“Of course!” he purred.
The clerk vanished, returned with the package.
“It’s scheduled for the six o’clock bus. Sure you don’t want it sent out?”
“Certain. The order’s been cancelled. Thank you.”
“Twenty-five cent handling charge. Shipped prepaid. You’ve got a credit coming.”
“Buy a cigar with it,” said Paul Pry, as he walked out of the door with the package which had originally been sent by Samuel Bergen to Herbert Dangerfield, the bill of lading for which had been through so many adventures.
In his pocket there still remained the bill of lading for an incense burner, shipped to Herbert Dangerfield at Midland, and due to leave on the six o’clock bus — the bill of lading for the purchase he himself had made for a very good reason.
He consulted his watch, muttered an exclamation of surprise.
“How rapidly time flies,” he remarked to himself, and sauntered toward the corner of the Cody Building.
A man with a pink carnation in his coat was waiting there when Paul arrived. The man seemed impatient.
Paul bowed, smiled.
“A certain young lady, who was unable to get away from her employment, requested that I deliver a certain document to you, and ask if you had any further instructions,” he drawled.
The man grabbed the bill of lading.
“About time,” he snapped, and hurried into the crowd, taking elaborate preparations to see that he was not followed.
But Paul Pry had no need to follow the man.
He returned to his rented roadster, parked within sight of the exit from the offices of the Interurban Motor Express Company. In the rear of that roadster was the package he had received when he had cancelled the shipment of Bergen’s package and surrendered the bill of lading.
He swung into the seat, cocked his feet up on the dash, lit a cigarette, and surveyed the faces of the hurrying throng that surged around him with a smile of placid repose.
Big Front Gilvray had arranged to have the bill of lading surrendered to his man during the rush hour when the streets were at the height of late-afternoon congestion. His man surrendered the papers Paul had given him at a time when the Interurban Motor Express Company was at the peak of its rush hour, employees rushing about, packages cascading down metal-lined chutes, truck engines roaring, men sweating, telephones ringing.
The man with the carnation swung from the door of the express company with a square package under his arm. He glanced surreptitiously up and down the street, then plunged into the mass of humanity.
Ten seconds later, ensconced in a closed car which had been parked at the kerb, a car driven by a coloured chauffeur in livery, the man was whisked away.
Behind that closed car, driving with consummate skill, Paul Pry piloted his rented roadster.
The chase led to an apartment building, one that was very similar to the one where Paul Pry maintained his own quarters.
The man jumped from the car, ran toward a door.
Paul Pry whistled, sharply.
The man turned. A hand went back to his hip pocket.
Paul Pry slammed on the brakes, jumped to the kerb.
“I forgot to include my card with the package,” he said, and extended a slip of oblong pasteboard.
The man took the pasteboard.
“How the hell did you get here?” he demanded.
Paul merely bowed, smiled.
“Thank you, thank you.”
“Not so fast,” growled the man. His gaze went swiftly up and down the street. “Back into that doorway, you damn fool, and keep your hands up.”
Paul Pry backed into the doorway, his face wearing a pained expression of puzzled surprise.
The man with the carnation lunged forward. Blued steel glittered in his right hand.
“Stick ’m up,” he said.
Paul Pry’s wrist swung the cane in a glittering arc, too swiftly rapid for the eye to follow. There was the sound of a cracking click as the wood crashed against the blued steel, the whoosh of expelled breath as the point jabbed into the pit of the man’s stomach.
“Touché!” exclaimed Paul Pry, as he pushed past the figure.
The man groped for his gun, his face writhing in agony, his skin greenish, his mouth open, gasping for air.
Paul Pry vaulted into the seat of his roadster. Behind it a long string of cars was clamouring for action. Paul Pry slammed in the gears. The roadster shot forward. The string of impatient cars filled up the gap. By the time the man with the carnation reached the closed car pursuit was out of the question. Paul Pry was driving at the head of a snarled mass of traffic.
He reached his apartment just as Mugs Magoo was reaching for a telephone.
“Oh, there you are, sir. I was wondering if I hadn’t better find out where Gilvray was holed up and get in touch with him. I was getting a mite worried, sir.”
“No need, Mugs. I had a perfectly delightful afternoon. The only thing that bothered me was the fact that Gilvray might suspect the moll of a double-cross and make it hot for her, so I had to send him my card with a brief note of thanks, telling him just how I had put two and two together.”
“And did you make four?” asked Mugs.
“I think so, Mugs. I think so. We’ll watch the personal column of The Examiner for the next few days. And just imagine the surprise of Big Front Gilvray when he opens the package and finds he’s got one brass incense burner, no more, no less. And do you know, Mugs, I stopped at an art store and arranged to have two pounds of choice incense delivered to him at his apartment. His name’s on the apartment directory, Mugs, B F Gilvray — can you feature that? I suppose the initials stand for Big Front?”
“Nope, they stand for Benjamin Franklin. The boys all call him Big Front. Sure he lives under his own name, right out in the open.”
Paul Pry smiled.
“Benjamin Franklin, eh?” he queried.