The Adventures

  of Paul Pry

  Also published in Large Print by Erle Stanley Gardner:

  The Adventures of Paul Pry—Volume 1

  The Case of the One-Eyed Witness

  The Case of the Smoking Chimney

  The Case of the Terrified Typist

  The Case of the Footloose Doll

  The Case of the Singing Skirt

  The Case of the Blonde Bonanza

  The Case of the Crying Swallow

  The Case of the Rolling Bones

  The Adventures

  of Paul Pry

  VOLUME 2

  Erle Stanley Gardner

  G. K. HALL & CO

  Boston, Massachusetts

  1991

  Copyright © 1989 by Jean Bethell Gradner and Grace Naso.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in Large Print by arrangement with

  The Mysterious Press/Warner Books, Inc.

  G.K. Hall Large Print Book Series.

  Set in 16 pt. Plantin.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  (Revised for vol. 2)

  Gardner, Erie Stanley, 1889-1970.

  The adventures of Paul Pry.

  (A Nightingale mystery in large print) (G.K. Hall large print book series)

  “A large print mystery”—Cover.

  1. Pry, Paul (Fictitious character)—Fiction.

  2. Detective and mystery stories, American. 3. Large type books. I. Title. II. Series

  PS3513.A6322A66 1991 813 .52 90-5097

  ISBN 0-8161-5105-9 (lg. print : v. 1)

  ISBN 0-8161-5106-7 (lg. print : v. 2)

  Contents

  Slick and Clean

  1 Screams in the Dark

  2 The Goose Cackles

  3 Embrace of Death

  4 “Stop That Woman!”

  5 Slick and Clean

  Hell’s Danger Signal

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Dressed to Kill

  1 The Smuggled Letter

  2 As a Highwayman

  3 Murder Masquerade

  4 Bunny’s Nutcracker

  The Cross-Stitch Killer

  1 Murdered Millions

  2 Paul Pry Turns Peeping Tom

  3 The Wooden Fish

  4 The Second Check

  5 Cross-Stitch Killer

  6 Fifty Grand

  Slick and Clean

  Death awaited him in that mysterious chamber—death from three blunt-nosed guns.

  Yet Paul Pry only smiled as he hurried toward it. When a fellow has been put on the spot,

  the least he can do is to be on time for the works.

  1

  Screams in the Dark

  The girl emerged from the underbrush by the river road, stood where the headlights of the automobile fell full upon her white face, and screamed with stark terror.

  Such clothes as she had worn had been ripped to shreds. There were bruises on her arms and chest. The white skin of her body was scratched where brush had scraped against it as she had plunged headlong in mad terror.

  Her eyes were staring, dark with fear. Her face was pale to the lips. One well-formed leg protruded through a rip which ran from the hem of her skirt to the hip. Her hands were upraised, palms outward, and ostentatiously empty.

  But Paul Pry did not bring his automobile to an immediate stop. Big Front Gilvray, arch-gangster, had decreed that Paul Pry be placed on the spot, and the decree had been overlong in execution.

  The sixteen cylinder automobile which

  Paul Pry was driving was no mere sedan, as its appearance would indicate. It was built of armor which would stop a rifle bullet, and the windows were of bullet-proof glass.

  Several slight indentations in the armor of the body bore witness to a previous attempt on the part of the gangsters to carry out the orders of their vengeful chief. But the machine gun had failed to penetrate and Paul Pry had lived to take his powerful car out for an evening drive on the river road.

  And because it was more than probable that this screaming woman might well be the bait with which some trap was to be sprung, Paul Pry ran his automobile some fifty yards past her before he brought it to a stop. Then he switched off all lights, took the butt of his automatic in his hand, and opened the door.

  “Do you want help?” he called.

  And, as his hail was swallowed up in the dark shadows of the brush which rimmed the road, Paul Pry listened, his every sense alert.

  The screams of the woman came to his ears. They were steady, high-pitched, mechanical screams. Such screams might a woman give who had gone into hysterics, then worn down her emotions through a sheer ecstasy of fear until fatigue had taken a hand and made of the screams a regular rhythm of unconscious effort.

  Paul Pry called to her again, and the call was unanswered. But the screams became louder. She was running toward him.

  Paul pry left the door open. He started the purring power of the sixteen cylinder motor, waited.

  She was still screaming as she blocked the door of the automobile.

  “Get in,” said Paul Pry.

  The woman scrambled in the car. Paul Pry snapped in the clutch so suddenly that the forward lunge of the machine slammed the door shut. His headlights snapped on, and he also clicked on the dome light—just to make sure that those hands remained empty.

  They were still empty, beseeching hands that clung to his coat with the grip of hysteria. The screams ceased, and, in their place, came sobs, heart-wrenching sobs which would eventually bring solace to the overtaxed nerves.

  Paul Pry drove his machine for nearly a mile, then turned up a side road and stopped. He disengaged his left hand from the steering wheel, turned toward her.

  She grabbed him, flung her slender body close to his as a drowning woman will grasp at the form of a rescuer. Paul Pry slid his right arm around her waist. She pressed a tear-stained cheek to his, sobbed out unintelligible words.

  Paul Pry patted the bare shoulder, attempted to soothe her. Gradually his words impressed themselves upon her senses and the throbbing quieted. She snuggled to him as a kitten might snuggle to a warm brick, dropped her head upon his shoulder, and lapsed into a semi-conscious condition which seemed half sleep, half stupor.

  Paul Pry, engine idling for a quick getaway if occasion should require, lights switched off, right hand within quick reaching distance of his automatic, maintained watchful silence.

  After some ten minutes she straightened. Her muscles seemed more relaxed. Her hands ceased to claw at his garments.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “The name,” he said, “Pry. You seemed to be pretty much frightened.”

  She flung herself to him as he reminded her of her fright. Then, as his hand slid along the bare skin of her back where the garments had been torn, she gasped and flung herself away, modesty asserting itself.

  She explored the damage to her garments with questing fingers.

  “Isn’t there a light in the car?” she asked.

  “Yes,” answered Paul Pry, “there is a dome light.”

  “Turn it on.”

  He snapped the switch.

  As the light showed her the extent of her figure which was readily visible through the torn garments, she stifled a little scream.

  “Turn it off!” she cried.

  Paul Pry switched off the light.

  “Haven’t you a robe or something?”

  “I have an overcoat in the back of the car. I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said, and was over the back of the seat with a motion as lithe as that of a wildcat stalking from cover to cover.

  Paul Pry turned on the light again.

  “On the robe rail,” he said.

  “O.K., big boy, keep your head turned.”

  There was a rustle of garments.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Lord, what a spectacle I must have been! Did you find me in the road?”

  “You came to the road and stopped me.”

  “Where are we now?”

  “About a mile from where I picked you up.

  “Let’s get out of here—quick!”

  “Do you want to tell me about it? That is, can I help?” asked Paul Pry.

  She climbed back over the seat, gathered the overcoat about her legs, wrapped it around her breast, grinned.

  “O.K. Gimme a cigarette. Guess I must have gone off my nut for a while.”

  “You had hysterics.”

  “Maybe. I ain’t the type that can’t stand the gaff, but that was too much. They were taking me for a ride.”

  Paul Pry handed her the electric cigarette lighter. She inhaled a great drag from the cigarette, blew out the smoke in twin streams from appreciative nostrils, sighed. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Paul Pry nosed the car over the rough road, found a good place to turn, swung the big machine around, headed back to the highway, and purred into speed.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  She cocked her head on one side, regarded him with quizzical eyes. They were, he saw, blue eyes, eyes that held a sort of light in their depths, a puzzling, challenging light. Her lips were half parted, and pearly teeth glinted invitingly. Her head was tilted back and up, and the long line of her throat, stretching down to where his overcoat lapels parted, showed with the gleam of pure ivory.

  “I’m not a good gir
l,” she said, and watched him.

  Paul Pry laughed.

  “What is this, a confession?”

  She took another drag at the cigarette, shook her head, removed the paper cylinder and smiled frankly.

  “No, but I don’t want to get you in bad, and I wanted to tell you the worst at the start. I’m a gangster’s moll—or I was. I’ve helped rum-runners load and unload, and I’ve seen a hijacking or two.”

  Paul Pry did not seem greatly surprised.

  “So,” she stressed, “I’m not what you’d call a ‘good’ girl.”

  Paul Pry’s eyes were on the road ahead.

  “The habit of classifying all women as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ went out of fashion ten or fifteen years ago—thank heavens!” he said.

  She sighed.

  “I’m glad you feel that way. You see, I

  was the moll of Harry the Dip, and they took me for a ride. Maybe you read about it in yesterday’s paper. Well, they thought I might get sore and squeal, so they decided to take me for a ride.

  “I was to visit a girl friend and stay with her for a while. She said she’d send a friend in his car. God, she double-crossed me! Damn her. I’ll claw her eyes out. Well, that’s about all there was to it. This ‘friend’ jabbed a gun in my ribs. The car stopped and picked up another man. They took me out on the river road, turned up a side road, found a place that suited them, and got ready to bump me off.

  “But I got a break. One of them sort of fell for me. I got to playing them one against the other, watched my chance and jumped into the brush. They both shot at me half a dozen times, and I guess the fear and the running and all that just sent me off my nut. I don’t remember anything else until I found myself pulling the cry-baby act on your shoulder. Was I a nuisance?”

  “Not at all,” said Paul Pry.

  She sighed.

  “God, it’s awful lonesome with Harry gone!”

  Paul Pry made no comment. The blue eyes flashed up and down his profile. The overcoat fell away on one side, disclosing a large expanse of shapely limb. But the eyes of Paul Pry, narrowed into calculating slits, remained on the road.

  Slowly, with a tardiness that was almost an invitation, the girl replaced the flap of the overcoat and regarded him thoughtfully.

  “Are you afraid of getting mixed up with the gangs just for rescuing me?”

  Paul Pry answered that at once.

  “No,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you would be.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked her. “Louise Eckhart,” she told him. Then, after a moment, “My friends call me Lou.” “Where do you want to go, Lou?”

  She smiled up at him.

  “I like you,” she said.

  He nodded. “Where to?” he repeated. “I’ve got a suitcase parked at the Union Depot. I did have the check in my stocking. Wonder if it’s gone?”

  She pulled the overcoat to one side, searched the tops of her stockings, first the right, then the left. She handed him a crumpled bit of pasteboard.

  “That’s luck. I can get some clothes. Would you mind driving to the depot, get-

  ting the suitcase, and then driving me where I can dress?”

  “Not at all,” said Paul Pry. “I’d better get some gasoline if we’re going that far, though. I’m about out.”

  They were approaching the junction of the river road with the through boulevard, and the lights of gasoline stations flung themselves out across the darkness.

  The girl sighed.

  “You,” she proclaimed, “are a regular guy.”

  Paul Pry made no comment. He drove into a gasoline station.

  “Fill her up,” he told the attendant, and walked to the telephone, gave the number of his apartment, and heard the voice of “Mugs” Magoo on the telephone.

  “Drunk, Mugs?”

  “Not yet. Gimme ten minutes more an’ I will be.”

  “Forget it. Take a drink of water and chase down to the Union Depot. I’m going to drive in there with a moll. Manage to give her the once-over and see if you place her. Then go back to the apartment. I’ll meet you there.”

  Mugs Magoo grunted.

  “I’ll do it all for you—all except take the drink of water,” he remarked. “Water’s poison to my system,” and he clicked the receiver back in place.

  2

  The Goose Cackles

  Paul Pry paid the attendant. The girl watched him with shrewd eyes. “Telling the wife you were detained at the office?” she asked.

  “No wife.”

  “Betcha I’m making you miss a heavy date, then.”

  Paul Pry grinned.

  “It’s worth it.”

  He got into the car, drove rapidly and skillfully through the traffic, parked in front of the Union Depot, handed a red-cap porter the crumpled pasteboard and a half dollar.

  “At the check stand,” he said. “Make it snappy.”

  And Paul Pry watched the face of the girl at his side to see if she was at all nonplused at his failure to call for the suitcase in person. If she was, she failed to show it.

  Paul Pry was red hot. It might well be that the sole function of this girl was to get him on the spot in front of the checking stand at the Union Depot.

  Mugs Magoo walked past.

  His glassy eyes flicked once toward the automobile, then turned away. He walked awkwardly, dressed in shabby clothes, his right arm gone at the shoulder.

  At one time he had known every crook in the underworld, and his information was now hardly less complete. He had been “camera-eye” man for the metropolitan police. A political shake-up, an accident which cost him his right arm, and bad booze, had made him a human derelict selling pencils in the gutter.

  Paul Pry had “discovered” him, and organized a strange partnership. For Mugs Magoo never forgot a name, a face or a connection. While Paul Pry was an opportunist de luxe who lived by his wits. And of late he had chosen to exercise those wits in a battle against Benjamin Franklin Gilvray, known to the police as Big Front Gilvray.

  For years Big Front Gilvray had grown in power and prestige. The police knew him as a big man, too powerful to tackle, a gangster who was always in the background, letting his minions do the dirty work of murder and plunder. The police hated Gilvray, and they feared him.

  To Paul Pry, Big Front Gilvray was merely the goose which laid his golden eggs.

  The red cap returned with a suitcase, deposited it in the car. Paul Pry drove away into the stream of traffic.

  “Gosh,” said the girl, “I can’t change in here. You’re sort of one of the family, but these windows are too wide. I don’t want to give the whole damned city a treat.”

  Paul Pry nodded.

  “We will go to a safe place,” he said.

  And he meant what he said. He had no intention of letting this girl open that suitcase, take out a gun and pull the trigger.

  He took her to a cheap hotel, engaged a suite of connecting rooms, took her up to those rooms, and closed the door while she engaged in the process of changing her clothes.

  When she rejoined him in the bedroom, Paul Pry was ready for anything in the line of attack. But there was nothing. She smiled gratefully at him.

  “Kid,” she said, giving him her hand, “here’s where we part. I ain’t asked you nothing about yourself, but I have an idea you’re a big shot on the lam, maybe from Chi. It’s easy enough to see that you’re about half sold on the idea that I am a lure to put you on the spot.