“What do you mean, Mugs?”
Mugs Magoo gestured with a fork. “That guy over there,” he said, “is Tom Meek.”
“All right,” Paul Pry said, “who’s Tom Meek?”
“A letter smuggler.”
“A letter smuggler, Mugs?” asked Paul Pry. “I never heard of such a thing.”
Mugs Magoo manipulated his fork so as to get a mouthful of food. His right arm was off at the shoulder and his left hand had to do the work of both cutting and conveying food while he was eating, gesticulating while he was talking.
“Tom Meek,” he said, “smuggles letters out of the jail. That’s where he picks up his side money.”
“He’s a jailer?” asked Paul Pry.
“Yeah, sort of a deputy, third-assistant jailer. He’s hung around the jail through three administrations. He smuggles letters out for prisoners.”
Paul Pry nodded and filed the information away for what it might be worth. His keen eyes stared at the man Mugs had indicated. A small inconspicuous individual, with grey hair, high cheekbones and watery eyes.
“Looks harmless, Mugs,” said Paul Pry.
Mugs Magoo nodded casually. “Yeah,” he said, “he don’t do anything except smuggle letters. That’s his racket. He won’t touch anything else. He won’t even take hop in to the prisoners.”
“All right,” persisted Paul Pry, “why do you think that Tom Meek, the letter smuggler, knows anything about the Legget diamond?”
“He don’t,” Mugs Magoo agreed readily enough. “But you see that heavy-set fellow over there at the table, with the jaw that’s the blue-black, in spite of the fact he’s been shaved not over two hours ago, the guy with the black hair and the big chest?”
“Yes,” said Paul Pry, “he looks like a lawyer.”
“He is a lawyer. That’s Frank Bostwick, the criminal lawyer, and he’s attorney for George Tompkins, and Tompkins is the man that’s in jail for pulling the robbery that netted the Legget diamond.”
“All right,” said Paul Pry, “go on, Mugs.”
Mugs swung his head in the other direction. “And the tall dignified coot over there with the starched collar and the glasses is Edgar Patten, and Patten’s the confidential representative of the insurance company that had the Legget diamond insured.”
Paul Pry watched Mugs Magoo thoughtfully, his eyes glittering with interest despite their preoccupation.
“Well, Mugs,” he said, “give me the low-down on it and perhaps I can turn the information to some advantage.”
Paul Pry lived by his wits alone. He would have indignantly denied that he was a detective in any sense of the word; on the other hand, he could have demonstrated that he was not a crook. Had he been called upon to give his business, he might have described himself as a professional opportunist.
Mugs Magoo, on the other hand, had a definite status. He was confidential adviser to Paul Pry.
Mugs never forgot a name, a face, or a connection. At one time he had been “camera-eye” man on the metropolitan police force. A political shake-up had thrown him out of employment. An accident had taken off his right arm at the shoulder. Booze had done the rest. When Paul Pry found the man he was a human derelict, seated on the sidewalk by the corner of a bank building, holding a derby hat in his left hand. The hat was half filled with pencils, with a few small coins at the bottom.
Paul Pry had dropped in half a dollar, taken out one pencil and then been interested in something he had seen in the rugged weather-beaten face, in the flash of gratitude which had filled the unwinking glassy eyes. He had engaged him in conversation and had learned that the man was a veritable encyclopaedia of underworld knowledge.
That had been the last day Mugs Magoo had known want. It marked the formation of a strange association by which Mugs furnished Paul Pry with information and the chain-lightning mind of Paul Pry translated that information to pecuniary advantage.
Mugs Magoo rolled his glassy eyes in another survey of the room and then turned once more to Paul Pry.
“Here’s probably what’s happening,” he said. “Frank Bostwick, the lawyer, is making a deal with Edgar Patten, the adjustor for the insurance company, to get Tompkins out with a light sentence or maybe get him turned loose without even a trial. The price he’s going to pay is the return of the Legget diamond.
“The cops have got a dead open-and-shut case on Tompkins but they haven’t been able to find the diamond. Tompkins is an old hand at the game and he’s sitting tight.”
“Then,” said Paul Pry, “you think that Bostwick knows where the diamond is?”
Mugs Magoo stared at the table where Tom Meek was dining in solitude. “I wouldn’t doubt,” he said, “but what Bostwick has worked up a deal with Patten and smuggled a letter in to Tompkins by Meek. Then Tompkins has sent a reply back and Meek has got it to deliver.”
“Why doesn’t Meek deliver it then?” Pry wanted to know.
“That’s not the way Meek works,” said Mugs Magoo. “He’s one of those cagey individuals that never comes out with anything in the open. He’ll sit around there and eat his dinner. Then he’ll get up and leave the place. The letter will be planted under his plate or under his napkin somewhere, and Bostwick will go over and get it. Then Bostwick will get in touch with Patten and they’ll fix up the deal between them.”
Paul Pry surveyed the dining-room of the speakeasy with wary eyes that missed nothing.
“I could,” said Mugs Magoo plaintively, “stand another bottle of that wine.”
Paul Pry summoned the waiter. “Another pint,” he said.
Mugs Magoo made a grimace. “A pint,” he said, “is a half-bottle.”
“A quart, waiter,” Paul Pry remarked.
Mugs Magoo nodded his satisfaction. “Gonna telephone,” he said. “Be back by the time the wine gets here.”
He scraped back his chair and started in the general direction of the telephones.
It was at that moment that Tom Meek summoned the waiter, paid his check, and arose from the table. He was halfway to the door when the light dimmed to a pale blue effect of imitation moonlight and the orchestra struck up a seductive waltz.
In the confusion of the milling couples on the floor and other couples rising spontaneously from tables and twining into each other’s arms, Frank Bostwick, the lawyer, got to his feet and unobtrusively started toward the table which Meek had vacated.
Paul Pry took instant advantage of the opportunity and the confusion. As swiftly and noiselessly as a trout, gliding through the black depths of a mountain pool, he slipped over to the table where Meek had been sitting. His hands made a questioning exploration of the table. The tips of the searching fingers encountered some flat object beneath the tablecloth and within a very few moments the flat object had been transferred to Paul Pry’s hand.
It was a letter folded and sealed, and Paul Pry made no attempt to read it but folded it once again and thrust it into his shoe. Then he swung slightly to one side and paused before a table where a woman was seated.
The woman was one of a trio who had entered the speakeasy, either the mother or the older sister of the young woman who accompanied her, and who was at the moment sliding into the first steps of the waltz with the young man of the party. She was amazed and flattered at Paul Pry’s attention and, after a moment, when startled surprise gave way to simpering acquiescence in her expression, she permitted herself to be guided out to the centre of the room which was reserved for the dance floor.
Paul Pry moved gracefully in the steps of the waltz. He had an opportunity to peer over the woman’s shoulder and see that Frank Bostwick, the lawyer, was seated at the table that had been vacated by Tom Meek, the letter smuggler.