The Adventures of Paul Pry

Paul Pry’s piercing eyes stared into the glassy orbs of “Mugs” Magoo, the man who never forgot a face.

“So I’m to be put on the spot, eh, Mugs?”

Mugs Magoo, one-armed, ragged, unshaven, reached for the bottle of whiskey. His glassy eyes never left Paul Pry’s face.

“I’ll say! I warned you, warned you fifty times. Now it’s come, just like I said it would.”

Paul Pry crossed the room to a closet which was filled with drums. He selected a favourite, a Hopi ceremonial drum, sat down with the wooden cylinder between his knees and tapped the taut rawhide with a stick of juniper at the end of which was a padded ball of buckskin.

There boomed forth a muffled pulsation of sound, a deep, resonant sound in which there was mingled a vibration of that which is utterly savage and untamed.

“Warned me?” he asked, almost dreamily.

“I’ll say! Not once but fifty times. Remember, before that last job I told you. I was sitting right here in this room, and I told you if you kept on monkeying with ‘Big Front’ Gilvray, he’d have you bumped. And what did you do? Went out and copped the Goldcrest necklace after the Gilvray gang had spent weeks trying to pull the job. You got Inspector Quigley to turn in the necklace for the reward, but that didn’t fool Gilvray none. He knew who upset his apple cart.”

Paul Pry ceased his drumming and grinned. There was something boyishly appealing about that grin, yet his eyes were hard as twin diamonds.

“And Gilvray sent me a note telling me I’d soon be pushing daisies,” he said.

“I’ll say!” agreed Mugs Magoo, without enthusiasm. “Why you couldn’t have pulled your stuff with different gangs is more than I know. But you had to keep after Big Front Gilvray. Every time he pulled a job you slicked him out of the sway and copped a reward. No crook’s going to stand for that racket.”

And Mugs Magoo, shifting his glassy gaze from Paul Pry’s face to the whiskey bottle, hesitated, reached toward the bottle, sighed, withdrew his hand, sighed again and grabbed the bottle.

Paul Pry, his diamond eyes unblinking, snapped a question at his accomplice.

“Precisely,” he demanded, “what is the reason for your latest prophecy of doom?”

Mugs Magoo poured the whiskey into the glass.

“‘Woozy’ Wiker,” he said, then, after an interval, added, “from Chicago.”

Paul Pry laughed, and his laugh contained no note of apprehension. It was the laugh of one who derives nothing but enjoyment from life.

“Woozy Wiker? Really, Mugs, your friends do have the most delightful names! First it’s Benjamin Franklin Gilvray, who’s known as Big Front Gilvray because he likes to throw a big front. Now it’s Woozy Wiker! How does the estimable Mr. Wiker get his nickname?”

Mugs Magoo shook his head doggedly.

“Go ahead and laugh if you want to. I’ll tell the undertaker to pinch up your cheeks into a grin so you’ll look natural.”

Paul Pry’s laugh died into a chuckle.

“Come on, Mugs, be a sport. Have another drink if you must, but tell me about Woozy Wiker, from Chicago.”

Mugs Magoo regarded the whiskey bottle with a dour eye, sighed, shook his head, gazed at his empty glass, and then shifted his eyes to Paul Pry’s face.

“Woozy Wiker puts ’em on the spot,” he said. “He can pretend he’s drunk better than any guy in the world. When he’s working up a job he likes to act like he’s plastered. But he’s deadly. He bumped off Harry Higley, though they never proved it on him. He got Martha the Moll on the spot after she was suspected of telling the police all about the Dugan murder. They never even arrested him for that, but they know.”

Paul Pry tapped a few gentle notes on the drum.

“And now Big Front Gilvray has sent for him?”