She raised her legs over the gear shift, slammed the feet down on the brake and clutch pedals, and she did it all with a swift efficiency, a lack of lost motion, which indicated perfect muscular coordination.

  Her manner was that of one who is accustomed to swift decisions and rapid execution of those decisions. And Paul Pry, curious, sensing an opportunity to exercise his unusual talents, moving with an efficiency every whit as swiftly purposeful as that of the young woman, leaped into the seat beside her and slammed the door.

  The gears were meshing by the time the door catch banged into place. Paul Pry turned his head toward the opposite side of the street as the car lurched into motion.

  Mugs Magoo was crouched as he had been before the swift battle. His hat was moving in a series of circles. The danger sign. And then the car, swinging for the corner, lost Mugs Magoo from Paul Pry’s vision.

  2

  The woman sent the car into hurtling speed, quested the side street, prowled about the main boulevard, and finally was forced to face the facts. She had lost the car ahead.

  She slowed, turned a drawn, haggard face to Paul Pry. “He’s gone!” she said.

  Her voice held a note of despair, an utter hopelessness which indicated that something of the utmost importance had gone from her life.

  Paul Pry nodded, his ears attuned to the throbbing of a police siren which was growing in intensity with a rapidity which betokened high speed on the part of the police car.

  “I don’t know how you feel about the police,” he said. “But, as far as I’m concerned—”

  And his shoulders shrugged expressively as he jerked his head over his shoulder in the direction of the shrieking siren which was now drawing uncomfortably close.

  The woman acted as though she had heard that siren for the first time, and her reactions were characteristically swift. She floorboarded the throttle, and the car leaped forward like a startled deer.

  Paul Pry noticed that she was an expert driver as the car swung into the side street, tilted, skidded, straightened as the whirling rubber bit into the pavement, and then they went places in a hurry.

  By the time the woman took her foot off the throttle for a moment, and pressed hard on the brake as a bit of traffic loomed ahead, the sound of the siren had become inaudible to Paul Pry’s ears. The police car had probably gone first to the scene of the shooting.

  Paul Pry grinned at the girl as the traffic signal straightened out enough to give a way through, and the young woman sent the car through that hole in the traffic like a skimming trout, snaking through an opening in some submerged logs to head for the shady shelter under an overhanging bank.

  “Can I be of any assistance?” he asked.

  She shook her head, and, unlike many drivers of her sex, did not turn her head as she addressed him, but kept her eyes glued to the road.

  “I guess not. But you can come with me while I pour a jolt of gin into my system. God knows I need it!”

  Paul Pry settled back on the cushions.

  “O.K. by me,” he murmured.

  The car made several corners. The woman started glancing about her, swung the car in a figure eight around a space of four blocks, making certain that no one was following. Then she slammed on the brakes, switched off the lights, twisted the steering wheel, and sent the car slamming up a private driveway, midway in the block. The open doors of a narrow garage yawned ahead. The woman sent the car through those doors, skidded the tires on the floor of the garage just when it seemed she would crash out the rear end of the structure, and jumped to the floor, heedless of the expensive fur coat which flapped against greasy objects, scraped dusty wheel hubs.

  She was tugging at the door of the garage, getting it closed, and she apparently had no idea that Paul Pry would help her. Evidently she had been trained in self-sufficiency and did not expect those little masculine courtesies which are so priceless to most women of youth, beauty and expensive clothes.

  Paul Pry gave her a hand. The door slammed into place, and a spring lock clicked.

  “We go out the other way,” said the woman.

  She crossed the garage, groped for a door, opened it, and stood for a moment outlined against the illumination of a courtyard, listening, peering.

  Then she nodded, beckoned, and stepped out upon the cement. There was a flight of stairs, a door.

  Paul Pry followed her through that door and found himself in the carpeted corridor of an apartment house. They went up a flight of stairs to a second corridor, then up another flight to the third floor. The stairs were broad and carpeted with a thickness of cushioned cloth which made them absolutely silent. The illumination was not too brilliant.

  The front of the apartment showed at the end of the corridor, opening upon another street, well lit. The woman’s room was at the back, near those broad, well-carpeted stairs.

  She paused, fitted a latchkey to the lock, then stepped back. Her keys clinked in the pocket of the coat. The right hand was concealed beneath the glistening fur of the garment. She turned the knob with her left hand, flung open the door, waited a moment, then switched on the light.

  Paul Pry noticed that she had retrieved the gun from the back seat of her car, and he had no doubt as to what her right hand held beneath the concealment of the fur coat. But the woman made no effort to draw back out of the line of possible fire, or to have Paul Pry enter the apartment first. She was self-reliant, and she had been trained in the hard school of life that teaches its pupils to take things as they come.

  The lights showed an apartment, well furnished, luxurious. The soft lighting glowed invitingly upon deep chairs, upon massive tables, soft couches and rich tapestries. There was an odor of stale incense in the air, and the ash trays which were on the table were filled with cigarette ashes and cigarette butts. Aside from that, the place was an example of neat housekeeping.

  She walked, cat-footed, into the apartment.

  “Close the door,” she said to Paul Pry, flinging the words over her shoulder without turning her head, and walking toward a door which evidently opened into a bedroom.

  Here she did the same thing she had done at the door of the apartment—flinging open the door with her left hand, the right still being concealed beneath the fur coat. The bedroom was not as neat as the parlor had been. Paul Pry caught glimpses of sheer silks strewn over the bed, pink fluffy garments that were on chairs.

  The woman entered the room, pulled open the door of the closet, looked in it, looked under the bed. Then she walked out, went to the kitchen, kicked open the swinging door and stepped into the room. She clicked on the light switch and thrust the gun which her right hand had held, into some receptacle which had been tailored for it in the front of her dress, well out of sight. Then she sighed—turned to Paul Pry.

  “Open the ice box and get some ice and a lemon. I’ve got some gin, and I’ll get some glasses. I’m all in. How do you feel?”

  “Jake a million,” said Paul Pry.

  She nodded casually.

  “You would,” she said, and took some glasses from the little cupboard over the sink, sat them on the tiled drain board. Paul Pry opened the ice box, took out a tray of ice. He noticed that the ice box was filled with bottled goods, but that there was no trace of food in it. Evidently this woman was not strong on cooking.

  The drink was mixed. They clinked glasses.

  “I haven’t thanked you for stopping that swing that was headed for my head—not yet,” she said.

  Paul Pry touched his lips to the glass.

  “Don’t mention it,” he said.

  She drained her drink in three throaty gulps, tilting back her neck, drinking with a frankness that discounted all ladylike sips of the beverage, in favor of getting it down where it would do the most good.

  She sighed and reached for the bottle.

  “Don’t be polite,” she said. “I’ll be one up on you in a minute.”

  She fixed herself a second drink. Paul Pry’s glass was still half-filled as she inclined her glass to touch the brim of his for the second time.

  “Here’s how,” she said.

  She disposed of this drink more slowly.

  “Well,” she observed, “let’s have another one and go into the other room, and have a cigarette with it.”

  Paul Pry held the bottom of his glass up and drained the last of the drink.

  “O.K.,” he observed.

  She mixed the third, and then led the way into the living room, dropped in a chair. Her fur coat was open, hanging down on either side. She propped her feet up on a vacant chair.

  “Happy days,” said Paul Pry.

  “Here’s mud in your eye. Got a match?”

  Paul Pry lit her cigarette, stared pensively for a moment, and sighed again.

  “I love my friends, and hate my enemies,” she said.

  “Meaning?” asked Paul Pry.

  She turned glitteringly dangerous eyes on him.

  “Meaning that I hate a sniveling hypocrite,” she said, “and meaning that you’re a total stranger to me.”

  “I don’t get the connection,” said Paul Pry.

  Her cheeks had color now, and the eyes held a moist glitter which came from the alcohol of the first two drinks.

  “Meaning that if anything happened and I had to choose between a friend and a total stranger, I’d stick by the friend!” she snapped.

  Paul Pry nodded. “You can’t be blamed for that.”

  “Don’t blame me, then.”

  “Pm not.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  “Perhaps.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “But,” said Paul Pry, his eyes lazily regarding the smoke which curled upward from his cigarette, “it must be quite a privilege to be a friend of yours.”

  “It is,” she agreed. There was a dreamy, reminiscent light in her eyes, as she added softly, after a moment, “And how!”

  Paul Pry grinned.

  “And highly inconvenient to be an enemy of yours.”

  The lips straightened.

  “You said something!” she replied, and her words were as close clipped as bullets.

  “How does one get to be your friend? Would saving your life do the trick?”

  She regarded him with sober, appraising eyes.

  “Well—” she hesitated.

  “Well what?”

  “I’m not ungrateful,” she said, slowly, “but I’m just telling you, no matter what happens, a total stranger don’t stack with an old friend. You remember that, no matter what else comes up between us, and then I won’t feel like a damned hypocrite if I should have to sacrifice you for a friend.”

  Paul Pry laughed lightly.

  “Baby,” he said, “I like your style.”

  The remark added nothing to the color of her cheeks or to the warmth of her eyes.

  “Most men do,” she agreed.

  “Now,” said Paul Pry, “tell me what it was all about.”

  She drew a deep breath, drained off the last of the drink in the glass, and muttered something that might have been a single explosive epithet.

  “You would have to ask that,” she observed, and it was as though she had picked up a switch to punish a friendly dog for some infraction of discipline, so far as her manner and tone were concerned.

  Paul Pry’s own eyes became just a trifle diamond hard but they remained appreciative.

  “The man that was with me,” she said, slowly, “was my brother.”

  Paul Pry nodded, and there was approval in his nod.

  “I thought he would be,” he said tonelessly.

  The young woman snapped him a suddenly questing look, but Paul Pry’s face was a mask.

  “Yes,” she said, “an only brother.”

  “What did they want him for?”

  “God knows. They tried to grab him off earlier in the evening. They smashed his nose. There was a doctor where we stopped the car. He was a friend of ours. They evidently figured we’d be coming there for medical attention, and they got there first and stuck around in the shadows, waiting for us to show up.

  “I rather had a hunch there might be some trouble there, which is why I got out and looked things over. I spose you noticed me giving you the once-over.”

  Paul Pry nodded.

  “And what will they do with him? Take him for a ride?”

  She winced at that, kicked her feet down from the chair without answering the question. She went to the door of the kitchen.

  “I’m going to have another drink.”

  “Count me out,” said Paul Pry.

  She stared moodily at him, regarding the hand that held the smoking cigarette between the fingers, noticing the steady wisps of smoke which went spiraling upward. There was no sign of tremor in the hand.

  “You sure got nerves!” she said, and there was genuine admiration in her tone. “I wish,” she went on, “that you wasn’t—”

  “Wasn’t what?” asked Paul Pry.

  “A total stranger,” she said.

  “Oh, well, it’s not a permanent relationship,” he observed.

  She nodded gloomily.

  “I’ve just got a hunch,” she said, and stopped to regard him with pursed lips and meditative eyes. “Did you see the faces of any of those men?”

  Paul Pry saw no particular reason for being truthful.

  “No,” he observed. “As one total stranger to another, I can tell you that I did not. I was too excited.”

  She laughed, a harsh, bitter laugh.

  “You’ve been places!” she said. And then she added an after-thought. “Let’s hope you don’t have things done to you,” she observed, and went into the kitchen to mix the other drink.

  3

  There sounded a whirring of an electric door device. The girl came out of the kitchen in two swift strides. Her skin matched her fur coat in color. Her right hand was once more beneath the folds of the garment.

  “Got a gun?” she asked of Paul Pry, and her tone while taut with emotion, was as casual as when she had asked him if he had a match.

  “I could find one if I had to,” said Paul Pry.

  “You may have to,” she said and strode to the door.

  She flung it open.

  “I’ll take it standing up, whatever it is,” she said, before she had seen what was in the corridor.

  A young boy came forward. He was in the uniform of a messenger service, and he held forward an addressed envelope.

  “Miss Lola Beeker?” he asked.

  The girl extended her left hand.

  “You guessed it, sonny.”

  His eyes took in her beauty with that breathless reverence which immaturity has for a beautiful woman, when eyes are just awakening to grace of form and face, and experience has not learned to tell that beauty of figure is, after all, but beauty of figure.

  “Gee!” he said, and handed her the envelope, his wide eyes still on her face. “You don’t need to give me no tip, lady. It’s a pleasure!”

  She ignored the breathless appreciation of her beauty with a disregard which showed she accepted such homage as a matter of course. She rewarded the boy with a smile and a pat of the hand. Paul Pry’s eyes noticed the mechanical nature of the smile, the casual carelessness of the pat. The boy noticed neither.

  He was still standing, wide-eyed, when the girl gently closed the door and ripped the edge off of the envelope with a hand that trembled.

  She pulled out a folded bit of paper and read a typewritten message. Her eyes were brilliant and hard. Her breast rose and fell with the strain of her heavy breathing.

  She folded the letter, replaced it in the envelope. She looked at Paul Pry with eyes that seemed unseeing, and walked into the bedroom.

  After a few moments, Paul Pry heard her voice.

  “I’m getting on some more comfortable things. Open that door, will you? The boy’s waiting for an answer. Tell him the lady says yes.”

  Paul Pry approached the door. This time he opened it with his left hand, and his right hand was hovering around the lapels of his coat.

  As had been so aptly observed by the lady herself, he was a total stranger.

  The boy in uniform was waiting, standing just as he had been when the door closed. His eyes showed a stab of disappointment as they focused on Paul Pry.

  “The lady,” said Paul Pry, “says yes.”

  The boy nodded, still stood, staring.

  “Gee, mister,” he blurted, “you ain’t her husband, are you?”

  “No,” said Paul Pry, “I’m a total stranger, and I’m going in just a minute or two.”

  The boy grinned.

  “Good night, mister.”

  “Good night,” said Paul Pry, and was careful to shoot the bolt on the lock when he had closed the door.

  The woman came out of the bedroom dressed in a filmy negligee.

  “This,” she said, “feels more comfortable.”

  “It looks like a million dollars,” said Paul Pry.

  “You gave the boy the message?” “Yes.”

  She nodded.

  “That was all, wasn’t it?” asked Paul Pry. “Just that the lady said yes?”

  Her eyes were starry.

  “Ain’t that enough?”

  Paul Pry turned toward his glass.

  “On second thought,” he remarked irrelevantly, “I think I’ll have another drink myself. Can I mix you one?”

  And he started toward the kitchen picking up the two glasses as he went.

  “No!” she snapped, and the starry gleam had gone from her eyes, leaving them as coldly observant as were the eyes of Paul Pry.

  Paul Pry mixed up the drink, taking care to make far more soda water in its content than gin, and returned to the room, the ice clinking in the glass.

  The woman had flung herself on the sofa.

  The negligee had fallen back from her raised bare arm which held a cigarette in a long jade and ivory holder. She was staring at Paul Pry.

  “That message,” she said, “was from a widowed sister. Her child’s sick, and she wants me to come out and stay with her tonight. I hate the thought of nursing a sick child.”