To the police, he was a baffling, dangerous mystery, this powerful czar of the underworld. But to Paul Pry and “Mugs” Magoo, he was only the goose that laid their golden eggs.
Paul Pry lounged in well-dressed ease on a corner in the congested business district. From time to time he received provocative glances from passing women. But the eyes of Paul Pry were fastened upon the huddled figure of “Mugs” Magoo.
Mugs Magoo had earned his nickname years before when he had been the camera-eye man for one of the police administrations. A political shake-up forced him out. An accident took off his right arm at the shoulder. Booze had done the rest.
Paul Pry had found Mugs Magoo selling pencils on the street, had taken a liking to the man, learned his history, and reached a working arrangement to their mutual advantage. For Paul Pry was an opportunist of the highest degree of skill and efficiency.
Even the closest observer would have failed to observe any connection between the slender, debonair young man on one corner and the huddled figure of the crippled pencil-seller on the other. Yet between the two passed the flowing stream of human traffic, and that stream was instantly checked by Mugs Magoo, who knew every denizen of the underworld.
A young woman, modestly attired, strikingly beautiful, gazed with dazed eyes at the snarl of traffic. Her clothes proclaimed her as coming from the country. Her air of innocent unsophistication fitted nicely with the round-eyed wonder of her expression.
Mugs Magoo dropped the hat containing his stock of pencils some two inches, and seeing Mugs’ signal, Paul Pry knew that the woman was a dip or pickpocket.
His keen eyes flashed over her in swift appraisal, then darted back to Mugs Magoo, and Mugs knew that his employer was not interested.
A short, well-tailored man strutted past, shoulders back, chin up. His face was a little pasty. His manner held a little too much assurance.
Mugs Magoo let his glassy eyes flicker once over the man’s features, then the hand which held the hat raised and swept in a half circle. Paul Pry interpreted the signal to mean that the man was a gangster and a killer, a gun for a mob, and a topnotcher in his profession.
But Paul Pry’s eyes did not even give the gangster a second glance. He was waiting for some choice titbit to drift into his net.
Half an hour passed without any interchange of signals. Mugs Magoo, crouched against the wall of a bank building, sold a few pencils, mumbled a few words of thanks as coins clinked into his hat, and surveyed the passing pedestrians with glassy eyes that never missed a face.
A thin, dour individual with ratty, suspicious eyes, pattered his way along the sidewalk with quick, nervous strides. Mugs Magoo’s gestures meant that the man was the pay-off for a gang of big rum-runners.
Paul Pry shook his head.
Another fifteen minutes and a man who might have been a banker paused on the corner, almost directly between Mugs Magoo and Paul Pry. Paul Pry moved abruptly to get the signals Mugs was making.
The man was slightly inclined to be fat. He was about forty-five. His cheeks were clean-shaven and massaged to pinkness. His motions were slow, weighted with the dignity of one who has accustomed himself to command. About him was none of the nervousness of a man who is forced to blast a living by the sheer force of his personality. Here was the calm assurance of one who reaps the crops others have sown. Serene, complacent, dignified, the big man with the broad chest and well-fitted waistcoat watched the flow of traffic with eyes that might have been concentrated rather upon some large financial problem than upon the composite rush of city traffic.
Mugs Magoo nodded his head, moved his hat in a circle, then shook it slightly. Paul Pry raised a hand to his hat, gave a flip to the cane which he held in his right hand, and sauntered a few steps toward the kerb.
Properly interpreted, those signals meant that Mugs Magoo had recognized the dignified individual as the scout of a powerful mob, and that the mob in question was the one headed by “Big Front” Gilvray.
And Mugs Magoo had not needed Pry’s answering signal to apprise him that his duties for the day were over. For it went without saying that any of the activities of Big Front Gilvray’s gang would be of absorbing interest to Paul Pry. Ever since Paul Pry had found that Gilvray was far too clever to let the police pin anything on him, and that the initials B F reputed in the underworld to stand for Big Front, really stood for Benjamin Franklin, Paul Pry had cultivated Gilvray as a pet aversion.
Mugs Magoo gathered up his pencils, put them in a voluminous pocket, scooped the few silver coins from his hat, got to his feet, and walked away.
The portly man continued to stand in dignified meditation, his eyes fixed upon the door of the Sixth Merchants & Traders National Bank. For anything that appeared in his face or figure to the contrary, he might have been a Wall Street banker, turning over in his mind the advisability of purchasing a controlling interest in the institution. Certainly no ordinary detective would ever have placed him as a gangster, scouting out information of value to his mob.
Five minutes passed. The gangster looked at his watch, and there was something impressive in the very motion of his well-manicured hand as he took the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket.
Two more minutes. There was the rumble of heavy wheels sounding a base note deeper than the whining tyres of the lighter traffic. An armoured truck rumbled to a stop before the side entrance of the bank.
Instantly special police cleared the space between door and truck. The end doors of the truck were opened. Two men with heavy revolvers bulging from shiny holsters stood at watchful attention. Employees of the bank trundled out two hand trucks loaded with small, but heavy wooden boxes.
The boxes were checked, and flung into the armoured truck. One of the armed men signed a paper. The steel doors clanged shut. The armed men entered the truck through another door which, in turn, clanged shut. Then there was the grating sound of bars sliding across steel. The special police walked back into the bank. The truck rumbled out into the stream of traffic, a rolling fortress, laden with wealth, impregnable.
The men inside had sub-machine guns, and were encased in bulletproof steel. Little slits gave them opportunity to fire in any direction. Bulletproof glass furnished their vision of the entire four points of the compass. There would be a special police escort waiting to receive the shipment at its destination. In the meantime, thousands of dollars, worth of gold was being moved safely and efficiently through the streets of the city.
The sides of the truck bore a sign, printed in the small letters of a firm that deals with conservative institutions in a conservative manner. “Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Co.”
Paul Pry inspected the sign with eyes that were slitted in concentrated thought. The truck turned a corner and was lost to sight. The gangster took a notebook from his pocket, took out his watch, and made a notation, apparently of the exact time.
Paul Pry managed to get a look at the face of the gangster. It was wreathed in a smile of satisfaction.
In impressive dignity, the man walked away, and Paul Pry followed him.
He walked for two blocks, and then approached the kerb. Almost instantly a huge, shiny machine drew up beside him. The car was driven by a slight individual whose skin was a dead white, whose eyes were pinpointed, but steady. In the rear of the car sat a large man whose flashing eyes were as keen as darting rapiers. Bushy brows covered those eyes as thunderheads cover the first flashes of lightning from a coming storm.
This was Big Front Gilvray. He might have been a United States senator, or a big corporation lawyer. He was, in fact, a crook, and a leader among crooks. The police had never pinned anything definite upon Big Front Gilvray.