The man Paul Pry had been following stepped into the car, and muttered something to Gilvray. To prove it, he produced the leather-backed notebook in which he had made a pencil entry at the exact time the armoured truck had received its cargo of gold.
The information was not so satisfactory to Gilvray as it had been to the man Pry had shadowed. Gilvray’s brows puckered together, his eyes filmed for a moment in thought. Then he shook his head slowly, judicially, in the manner of a judge who is refusing to act upon insufficient evidence. The car purred out from the kerb.
Paul Pry hailed a taxicab. Through the congested traffic he managed to keep close to the car. In the more open stretches of through boulevard he dropped some distance behind. But the big car rolled along at a rate of speed that was carefully timed to be within the law. Big Front Gilvray did not believe in allowing the police to get anything on him, even a petty traffic violation.
In the end, Paul Pry could have secured the same information from a telephone book that he paid a taxi driver seven dollars and five cents to secure. For the big, shiny automobile was piloted directly to a suburban house where B F Gilvray was living.
Paul Pry knew that house was listed in the telephone directory, that there would be a nameplate to the side of the door containing the words “Benjamin F Gilvray”.
Big Front Gilvray had given up his city apartment and moved into the suburbs. The house was set back somewhat from the street and was rather pretentious. There was a sweep of gravelled drive, a huge garage, a struggling hedge, some ornamental trees, and a well-kept lawn.
Paul Pry looked the place over, shrugged his shoulders, and had the cab drive him back to the city.
Paul Pry’s apartment was in the centre of the most congested district he could find. He liked the feel that he was in the midst of things, surrounded by thousands of humans. He had only to raise his window and the noises of traffic would roll into the apartment. Or, if traffic were momentarily silenced, there would sound the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of countless feet, plodding along the sidewalk.
Mugs Magoo was in the apartment, a bottle of whiskey at his elbow, a half emptied glass in his hand. He looked up with glassy eyes as Paul Pry entered.
“Find out anything, chief?”
“Not a thing, Mugs. The man you pointed out seemed to have gone to some trouble to find out exactly when an armoured truck left the Sixth Merchants & Traders National.”
“He would.”
“Meaning?”
“That guy was Sam Pringle. He’s one of Gilvray’s best men. He got an engineer’s education, and he believes in being thorough. When that bird writes down a seven it means a seven. It don’t mean six and a half, or about seven, or seven an’ a tenth. It means seven.” And Mugs Magoo drained the rest of the whiskey in his glass.
His tone was slightly thick. His eyes were watery underneath their film, and he talked with a loquacity which he reserved for occasions of alcoholic stimulation. But Paul Pry accepted this as a part of the man’s character. Mugs had cultivated the habit through too many years to put it lightly aside.
“What,” asked Paul Pry, “do you know of the Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Company?”
“A sweet graft. The illegal crooks built it up for the legal crooks. They have to ship gold back and forth every once in a while, now that they have lots of branch banks, and payrolls and all that sort of thing. The crooks went at it too heavy and almost killed the goose that was layin’ the golden egg. A bunch of bankers got together and bought some armoured trucks. They’re lulus. No chance of cracking one of those things short of using a ton of dynamite. Then they bonded every employee, and got an insurance company to insure every cargo. Now the bank is responsible until the cargo gets aboard the truck. After that the bank don’t have nothin’ to worry about.”
Mugs poured himself another drink and then continued: “In some cities the banks own their own trucks. Here, it’s all done through this company. You watch ’em loading. You’ll see a string of officers guarding the sidewalks. But the minute the last sack of gold bangs down on the floor of the trucks and the driver signs a receipt, the bank pulls in its cops. If there should be a hold-up the next second the bank officers would just yawn. They’re covered by insurance, and bonds and guarantees. They should worry.”
Paul Pry nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. “And why should the Gilvray outfit be so interested in the time the armoured trucks make their appearance? Do you suppose they contemplate staging a hold-up just as the gold hits the sidewalk? Perhaps having a regular slaughter with machine guns?”
Mugs Magoo shook his head emphatically.
“Not those babies. They go in for technique. They pull their jobs like clockwork. I’m tellin’ you the department ain’t ever got a thing on Big Front. They know lots, but they can’t prove a thing. That’s how slick he is.”
Mugs Magoo reached for his glass of whiskey.
“Don’t get crocked,” warned Paul Pry.
“Son, there ain’t enough whiskey left in the world to crock me.”
“Lots of fellows have wrestled with old John Barleycorn, Mugs.”
“Yeah. I ain’t wrestlin’. I’m gettin’ ready to take the count whenever he slips over the kayo. But what the hell’s left in life for a guy with one arm and no job?”
“Maybe you could get on the force somewhere.”
“Not now. They keep too accurate records.”
And because the talk had made Mugs Magoo blue, he tossed off the entire glass at a gulp, and refilled it.
Paul Pry crossed to the north wall of his apartment. Here were drums, all sorts of drums. There were huge war drums, Indian ceremonial drums, snare drums, cannibal tom-toms. Paul Pry selected his favourite drum as a violinist might select a favoured instrument.
It was an Indian rain drum of the Hopi tribe. It was made from a hollowed log of cottonwood, the wood burnt to proper temper and resonance. It was covered with skin, laced with rawhide thongs. The stick was made of juniper, wadded with a ball of cloth.
Paul Pry sat in a chair and boomed forth a few solemn sound-throbs from the interior of the instrument.
“Get that note of haunting resonance, Mugs. Doesn’t it arouse some savage instinct in your dormant memory cells? You can hear the pound of naked feet on the floor of a dance rock, get the suggestion of flickering camp fires, steady stars, twining bodies, dancing perhaps with rattlesnakes clasped in their teeth.”
Boom — boom — boom — boom!
The drum gave forth regular cadences of weird sounds — sounds that entered the bloodstream and heightened the pulse in the ears. Paul Pry’s face took on an expression of savage delight. This was the manner in which he prepared himself for intellectual concentration.
But Mugs Magoo merely drank whiskey and let his bleary eyes remain fixed on a spot in the carpet.
Slowly the tempo changed. The booming of the drum became more sombre. Gradually it faded into faint cadences of thrumming sound, then died away altogether. Paul Pry was in a rapt state of concentration.
Mugs Magoo poured himself another drink.
Fifteen minutes passed and became a half hour, and then Paul Pry chuckled. The chuckle rasped upon the silence of the room as a sound of utter incongruity.
Mugs Magoo cocked an eyebrow.
“Got somethin’?”
“I rather think I have, Mugs. Do you know, I have an idea I had better purchase a car.”
“Another one?”
“Another one. And I think I’d better register it in the name of B F Gilvray at 7823 Maplewood Drive.”
“Then he’d own it.”
“Certainly.”
“But you’d be paying for it.”
“Right again. But I’ve always wanted to make Gilvray a present.”