The first alarm had gone off, and the pasty-faced man was taking no chances.

  Paul Pry darted from the booth, walked swiftly to the brass-covered counter, reached out with his cane. The hooked handle slid through the curved grip of the suitcase he wanted. A jerk, and it came from the shelf, went through the air and lit fairly upon the brass-covered counter.

  The pasty-faced man was no coward. He had pulled down the suitcase Paul Pry had “planted” earlier in the evening, had cut loose the leatheroid side, and was pulling out the miscellaneous assortment of wires and clocks.

  His back was, of necessity toward the counter during those few brief seconds while he worked.

  Paul Pry took the suitcase, strolled casually toward the taxicab exit. The cabbie ran forward and grabbed the suitcase. Paul Pry stepped into the waiting cab and was whisked away.

  Inspector Oakley twisted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “You’ve been collecting a lot of rewards lately,” he said to Paul Pry.

  That individual nodded cheerfully.

  “After a fifty-fifty split with you, inspector.”

  Oakley studied the tip of his smoldering cigar.

  “Well, I guess it’s all right, only you’re sure going to be on a hot spot one of these days. Gilvray’s gunning for you—but that’s no news to you. Do you know, Pry, I have a hunch that if you’d go before the grand jury and testify to some of the things you know about Gilvray and his methods, you could get an indictment that would stick.”

  Paul Pry smiled.

  “And why should I do that, inspector?”

  “It would bust up his gang, relieve you of the certain death that’s hanging over your head.”

  Paul Pry laughed outright.

  “And kill the goosie that lays such delightful golden eggs for me—for us! Oh, no, inspector. I couldn’t think of it. By the way, inspector, I understand the corporation that lost the bonds has offered twenty thousand dollars for their return. Is that right?”

  Oakley grunted.

  “Yeah. They’ll probably be stuck for the whole issue if they don’t get ’em back, but they’re so tight they only offer twenty thousand. Maybe there’s a legal question about delivery. I don’t know. I understand the lawyers are in a snarl over it. It seems that if the messenger who was robbed was a messenger of the bank that’s buying the bonds there was a delivery and the bonds, being negotiable, can be cashed as against the company. If the messenger was in the employ of the company there wasn’t any delivery, or some such thing. It’s too fine spun for me.”

  Paul Pry extended a tapering hand, held his cigarette over the ash tray, flipped off the ash with a little finger that gave just the right thrust to drop the ashes in a pile in the center of the tray.

  “Suppose we split that reward fifty-fifty?”

  Inspector Oakley’s cigar sagged as his lower jaw dropped in surprise.

  “You’ve got ’em?”

  “Oh no. I wouldn’t have them, but my underground intelligence department advises me that the suitcase containing them has been checked in a certain checking stand in one of the large department stores here in the city.

  “I could advise you of the name of that store. I might even advise you of the number of the check. Then you could recover the bonds, announce that the police had ‘acted upon a tip received from the underworld through the lips of a stool pigeon, swooped down and recovered the bonds, and the culprit had escaped.’ Of course, you could take considerable credit—and ten thousand dollars in cold cash. That’s rather a pretty addition to the pile of reward money you’ve been collecting.

  “Naturally, I’d want my name kept out of it. It wouldn’t do to have the bulk of the police force watching me with suspicion.” Inspector Oakley took a deep breath. His eyes glittered with avarice.

  “This is something like! A nice clean job. I could pull that without having so damned many questions asked. Getting some of the swag you’ve tipped me off to has looked pretty raw and I’ve had to make a pay-off on some of my reward split; but this is slick and clean.”

  Paul Pry smiled.

  “Yes, inspector, you’re right. This is slick and clean. The location of the suitcase will be telephoned to you anonymously at precisely three minutes after midnight tonight. You can still make the morning papers with it.”

  “Why at three minutes after midnight?” asked Inspector Oakley.

  “So that you can have a witness or two present to verify your statement that the information was telephoned in from an undercover man or a stool pigeon, as you may prefer to make the explanation.”

  Inspector Oakley shook hands.

  Benjamin Franklin Gilvray occupied rather a pretentious dwelling in the more or less exclusive residential district. A well-kept lawn surrounded his house. The arch-gangster found that it was well to keep up a front, particularly during these troubled times when so many of his deals went sour.

  He lay in his soft bed, covered by blankets of the most virgin wool, his pillow a mass of wrinkles where he had been tossing around and turning during the night. The morning sun was seeping in through the windows.

  Big Front Gilvray had not slept well.

  A hoarse combination of sound came from the front of the house. He waited for silence, tried to doze off again, but the sound was repeated.

  He arose angrily, and flung up the curtain.

  What the hell was the matter with the boys that they let things like this happen? They knew he wanted silence.

  He looked out into the pale sunlight and saw a goose, tethered with a string to a peg driven in the lawn. The goose was strutting about with a neck crooked in suspicious uncertainty, a chest thrown well out, and a tail that wiggled from side to side with every web-footed stride.

  To the neck of the goose was attached a metal band and from this band dangled a piece of paper.

  Big Front Gilvray sounded the alarm.

  Two choppers swung machine guns into place. The goose might or might not be a trap. He might carry an infernal machine for all they knew. The machine guns cut loose.

  Bits of sod and dirt flew up from the lawn about the tethered goose. Then, as the guns centered, there was a burst of feathers, and the bird dropped into a limp heap.

  Covered by one of the machine guns, a gangster sprinted out on the lawn, retrieved the dead bird, brought it into the house.

  It was an ordinary goose. About its neck,

  attached to the metal band, was a bit of paper upon which was the message Big Front Gilvray had come to hate with a bitter hatred that transformed him from man to savage.

  DEAR GOOSIE. THANKS FOR

  ANOTHER GOLDEN EGG.

  The message was signed with two initials—P. P.

  And the morning paper which reposed on the front porch of the big mansion carried screaming headlines announcing that Inspector Oakley would collect a twenty thousand dollar reward for the recovery of a third of a million dollars in negotiable bonds.

  Big Front Gilvray, his anger transcending the bounds of sanity, grabbed the torn, bloody carcass of the bird and flung it across the room. It thudded to the wall with a splash of red, and a fluttering shower of feathers drifted through the room.

  Big Front Gilvray tore the paper into small bits and stamped upon them. His gangsters looked at one another in consternation. The chief was usually so suavely certain of himself that to see him like this caused them to lose confidence and respect.

  “Get that damned dude. Get him on the spot!” yelled Big Front Gilvray.

  But Paul Pry, peacefully sleeping, assured that his bank account would be augmented by another ten thousand dollars, was beyond being troubled by the rumbled threats of the gangster.

  As Inspector Oakley had so aptly remarked, the deal was “slick and clean.”

  Hell’s Danger Signal

  Against gangdom’s slickest pair “Mugs” Ma~ goo had warned him,

  yet deliberately Paul Pry had laid his plans. Did he have nine lives,

  nine charmed lives that he dared disregard all warning—dared overstep hell’s

  danger signal unafraid?

  1

  Paul Pry noticed that the street seemed strangely deserted, and attributed the fact to a mere temporary lull in traffic.

  He glanced at the opposite sidewalk where “Mugs” Magoo, ex-camera-eye man for the metropolitan police, was crouched against the wall of a bank building.

  Mugs Magoo was waving his hand in a series of slow circles. That was the signal of danger—the danger sign that Paul Pry had instructed his lieutenant was to be used only in the event circumstances necessitated a hasty retreat.

  It would, of course, have been the part of wisdom to have heeded that signal, for Mugs Magoo knew the underworld as perhaps no other living mortal. For years he had been on the force, merely tabulating crooks, filing their faces away in that card index memory of his. Then a political upheaval had lost him his job; an accident had lost him his right arm at the shoulder; and, he had become a drifter.

  Right at present he was taking the part of a cripple, selling pencils. His hat, half filled with pencils, and with just a few coins in the bottom, was balanced on the palm of his left hand. His face was covered with a two day’s growth of grayish stubble, and his glassy eyes seemed utterly uninterested in life.

  But, as a matter of fact, Mugs Magoo catalogued the underworld as it flowed past, on the side street that was to the gangster what Wall Street was to the financier. And Mugs’ hand, making signals with the hat, checked off the gangsters as they passed and relayed the information to Paul Pry.

  The danger signals increased in intensity.

  But Paul Pry was curious. His eyes were diamond hard, and there was a taut alertness about his well-knit figure that showed he had seen and interpreted the signal. Otherwise he might have been merely a well-dressed lounger, idling away the late evening on the city’s streets.

  A big car rolled around the corner, purred smoothly to the curb, on the same side as that occupied by Paul Pry. The door opened, and a woman stepped to the pavement.

  Paul Pry made his living by his wits. He loved excitement, and he had no mental perspective when it came to courting danger. Lately he had made his money, and a very great deal of money, through the simple process of shaking down gangsters, matching his wits against their brute force.

  And Paul Pry had learned from bitter experience that gangsters are very resentful indeed, and wont to show their resentment with pellets which are belched from a machine gun. He had also learned that beautiful women are, by very virtue of their beauty, likely to prove exceedingly false and dangerous.

  But none of those facts dimmed in the least Paul Pry’s appreciation of beauty. Nor did the danger curb his unique activities. So far, his agile wits had always kept him at least one jump ahead of those gangsters who wanted to remove him from the trials and tribulations of an unkind, but very interesting world.

  This woman was particularly beautiful. But her beauty had a suggestion of smooth hardness about it, like the polished surface of a diamond. She was clad in evening gown and a white fur coat that should have made her seem like a pure snowflake. In reality, she resembled an icicle, glitteringly hard and utterly cold, despite the beautiful figure, the graceful curve of the chin, and the profile which might have been chiseled from the finest marble by the most skilled artist.

  Paul Pry let his eyes slither over to the shadows across the street where Mugs Ma-goo crouched in watchful waiting.

  Mugs had ceased to move his hat. The danger sign was discontinued. Either the danger had passed, or else it was too late for a warning to do any good.

  The woman stared at Paul Pry, and there was nothing of virginal innocence in that stare. On the other hand, it was not the stare of one who wishes to make an acquaintance. It was merely that she wished to look at Paul Pry for reasons of her own, and she looked at him without seeking to disguise the fact.

  The woman was hardly the type to drive an automobile. Her expensive clothes, the pride of her bearing, created an impression of surroundings that should have included a liveried chauffeur, a big limousine, an expensive apartment.

  Yet she had been the one who had piloted the car, and the car was not a limousine. It was big and powerful, but was an open touring car with side curtains, partially concealing the back.

  The woman’s eyes glittered over the face of Paul Pry. Then she relaxed. A certain tension which had held her rigid seemed to have dissolved. The look of hardness vanished from her face. She became a creature of softly seductive curves, of ravishing beauty, and she moved toward the door which was at the rear of the touring car with the grace of a professional dancer crossing the stage.

  Her arm shot out. The gloved hand opened the door. The interior of the car seemed empty.

  “O.K., Bill,” she said.

  The plush robe on the floor of the car stirred into life. A casual observer would, perhaps, have expected some huge dog to answer the call and emerge from beneath the lap robe.

  But it was no dog that shook off the folds of the robe and came out into the tang of the night air.

  It was a man.

  The man wore evening clothes. Someone had smashed a terrific blow on his nose; the eyes were swollen; the front of the starched shirt and the waistcoat showed plainly the stains of crimson which had spouted from the nose.

  The coat was ripped. A pocket had been literally torn out, and was dangling from the threads which bound the bottom of the pocket to the coat. One of the silk lapels was ripped half away. There was no hat. The hair was matted, and the swollen nose made breathing through the mouth a necessity.

  He was undignified as he crawled out of the shelter of the robe, staggered to the pavement. The woman extended a solicitous hand to his arm.

  What followed came with that overlapping swiftness of events which is as impossible to follow in detail as the well-organized offensive of a well-drilled football team, sweeping down the field in a bewildering change of positions, executed at top speed.

  Doorways opened, and men came out of the darkness, running low. The street lights glinted from the steel weapons. Yet no shots were fired.

  One of the men swung a swift arm, and the blackjack “kerthunked” on the matted hair of the individual who had already seen such rough usage.

  Another man jumped behind him, was ready to receive the unconscious form as it slumped backward and down.

  Another swung a vicious blackjack at the woman’s head. She, too, would have been unconscious but for one thing, and that one thing was Paul Pry.

  Paul Pry carried a cane, which, to the casual eye, was merely a polished bit of wood. Only the trained observer would have noticed that that which seemed to be wood was not wood at all, but steel painted to resemble polished wood. That steel was very thin, and furnished the sheath for a tempered blade of finest steel which was attached to the handle of the cane.

  It was, in the hands of a trained fencer, a highly efficient weapon, and Paul Pry was adept in its use. His right hand jerked out the naked steel of the blade.

  The lights glinted from it as it darted forward, as smoothly rapid as the tongue of a snake. The man who was swinging the blackjack at the woman’s skull jumped back with a scream. The cold steel had flicked out and bit deep into the shoulder muscles. The swinging arm was deflected, and the blackjack whizzed down in a harmless swing.

  A car came around the corner, driven in second gear, the tortured tires shrieking their protest as they skidded over the pavement. Two men turned with oaths to Paul Pry.

  But there were no shots fired. For some reason, the assailants seemed to require absolute silence so far as their operations were concerned. It was an affair of steel and blackjacks. The glittering knives swept in wicked thrusts, and the men swung their blackjacks. But Paul Pry, standing with his left arm thrown about the woman, holding her closely to him, swung his blade in a flickering arc of deadly speed.

  The steel flecked in and out forming a barrier of perfect defense, biting once in a while into the bodies of the attackers.

  The woman swung. Her right hand came out from beneath the fur of the coat. There was a pearl handled, nickeled automatic smuggled in the palm.

  “I’ll shoot, you rats!” she blazed.

  The defense was too strong. The attackers jumped back. There was a muffled command.

  “He’s in the car,” said someone.

  “O.K., boys,” rasped a voice. “Leave the—”

  And the epithet which he used to describe the woman was one which was usually reserved for masculine ears.

  The woman broke away from Paul Pry’s grasp.

  “Give him back! Give him back!” she screamed.

  But the figures, still moving with well-disciplined efficiency of motion, had jumped into the purring automobile which had dashed to the curb. Doors slammed. The woman’s gun blazed.

  The shot might have been a signal. It finished the deadly silence of the attack.

  The car was ripping into grinding motion. The back wheels half spun as the power was kicked into the drive. The car seemed to jump forward, half stop, jump again.

  And there were little pin pricks of fire which leaped from the darkness of that car. The street echoed to the rattle of bullets. Paul Pry felt one whip past his cheek, felt something jerk the hat from his head, heard the rattle of a leaden hail against the side of the building behind him. Then the car was away, and the firing ceased.

  The woman’s face was deathly white. Her crimsoned lips were wide as she stared with bulging eyes at the departing car. And then her mouth spewed curses.

  Paul Pry touched her arm. “The police,” he suggested.

  The words affected her as would an electric shock. She jumped forward, toward the car she had driven up. One arm flung up the coat, the skirt, disclosing her shapely legs, the other pitched the weapon she had held into the back of the car, pulled open the door catch.