by Otto Penzler
Lester Leith coughed deprecatingly. “You wouldn’t want to accuse me of a crime without proof.”
“Two—hundred—thousand—dollars!”
Leith traced the perimeter of a smoke ring with his forefinger.
“And even if you had proof, you couldn’t convict me of any crime.”
“Why not?”
“Because any package which might have contained any loot would have also had my kunzite necklace mingled with it, and it’s no crime to recover your own stolen property. If any other property should have happened to be mingled with it, that would come under the legal head of commingled personal property.”
Sergeant Ackley scraped his jaw with his thumbnail.
“I’ll—be—”
“You will if you use profanity,” interrupted Lester Leith.
But Sergeant Ackley had already stormed to the door…
Rogue: Paul Pry
The Racket Buster
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
IN THE DECADE that Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) wrote for the pulps (averaging nearly four thousand words a day), he created three dozen series characters, some that had long careers with numerous capers, some a little less, such as Ken Corning, a tough attorney who morphed into Perry Mason after six stories; Major Copley Brane, a “freelance diplomat”; Bob Larkin, an adventurer and accomplished juggler whose only weapon was a pool cue; El Paisano, who could see in the dark; Sidney Zoom, a millionaire con man who prowled the city streets with his vicious police dog; and Speed Dash, the “Human Fly,” who gained his superhuman strength by crushing a raw potato in one hand every morning.
Paul Pry, who appeared in twenty-seven stories, is another of Gardner’s crook protagonists. Much like Gardner’s Lester Leith, Pry keeps an eye on other thieves and figures out how to acquire their ill-gotten gains, frequently calling on the police to (unwittingly) help him. He has befriended “Mugs” Magoo, a one-armed former cop, pulling him out of the gutter, and forms a kind of partnership with him—which turns out to be useful when he comes up against serious gangsters. Pry’s most despised victim, and one he confronts in more than one adventure, is Big Front Gilvray, whose real name is Benjamin Franklin. Pry has taken offense that so great a name has been corrupted by the gangster.
“The Racket Buster” was originally published in the November 1930 issue of Gang World Magazine; it was first collected in The Adventures of Paul Pry (New York, Mysterious Press, 1990).
THE RACKET BUSTER
Erle Stanley Gardner
PAUL PRY lounged in well-dressed ease on a corner in the congested business district. From time to time he received provocative glances from passing women. But the eyes of Paul Pry were fastened upon the huddled figure of “Mugs” Magoo.
Mugs Magoo had earned his nickname years before when he had been the camera-eye man for one of the police administrations. A political shake-up forced him out. An accident took off his right arm at the shoulder. Booze had done the rest.
Paul Pry had found Mugs Magoo selling pencils on the street, had taken a liking to the man, learned his history, and reached a working arrangement to their mutual advantage. For Paul Pry was an opportunist of the highest degree of skill and efficiency. Even the closest observer would have failed to observe any connection between the slender, debonaire young man on one corner and the huddled figure of the crippled pencil-seller on the other. Yet between the two passed the flowing stream of human traffic, and that stream was instantly checked by Mugs Magoo, who knew every denizen of the underworld.
A young woman, modestly attired, strikingly beautiful, gazed with dazed eyes at the snarl of traffic. Her clothes proclaimed her as coming from the country. Her air of innocent unsophistication fitted nicely with the round-eyed wonder of her expression.
Mugs Magoo dropped the hat containing his stock of pencils some two inches, and seeing Mugs’s signal, Paul Pry knew that the woman was a dip or pickpocket.
His keen eyes flashed over her in swift appraisal, then darted back to Mugs Magoo, and Mugs knew that his employer was not interested.
A short, well-tailored man strutted past, shoulders back, chin up. His face was a little pasty. His manner held a little too much assurance.
Mugs Magoo let his glassy eyes flicker once over the man’s features, then the hand which held the hat raised and swept in a half circle. Paul Pry interpreted the signal to mean that the man was a gangster and a killer, a gun for a mob, and a top-notcher in his profession.
But Paul Pry’s eyes did not even give the gangster a second glance. He was waiting for some choice tidbit to drift into his net.
Half an hour passed without any interchange of signals. Mugs Magoo, crouched against the wall of a bank building, sold a few pencils, mumbled a few words of thanks as coins clinked into his hat, and surveyed the passing pedestrians with glassy eyes that never missed a face.
A thin, dour individual with ratty, suspicious eyes, pattered his way along the sidewalk with quick, nervous strides. Mugs Magoo’s gestures meant that the man was the pay-off for a gang of big rum-runners.
Paul Pry shook his head.
Another fifteen minutes and a man who might have been a banker paused on the corner, almost directly between Mugs Magoo and Paul Pry. Paul Pry moved abruptly to get the signals Mugs was making.
The man was slightly inclined to be fat. He was about forty-five. His cheeks were clean-shaven and massaged to pinkness. His motions were slow, weighted with the dignity of one who has accustomed himself to command. About him was none of the nervousness of a man who is forced to blast a living by the sheer force of his personality. Here was the calm assurance of one who reaps the crops others have sown. Serene, complacent, dignified, the big man with the broad chest and well-fitted waistcoat watched the flow of traffic with eyes that might have been concentrated rather upon some large financial problem than upon the composite rush of city traffic.
Mugs Magoo nodded his head, moved his hat in a circle, then shook it slightly. Paul Pry raised a hand to his hat, gave a flip to the cane which he held in his right hand, and sauntered a few steps toward the curb.
Properly interpreted, those signals meant that Mugs Magoo had recognized the dignified individual as the scout of a powerful mob, and that the mob in question was the one headed by “Big Front” Gilvray.
And Mugs Magoo had not needed Pry’s answering signal to apprize him that his duties for the day were over. For it went without saying that any of the activities of Big Front Gilvray’s gang would be of absorbing interest to Paul Pry. Ever since Paul Pry had found that Gilvray was far too clever to let the police pin anything on him, and that the initials B. F. reputed in the underworld to stand for Big Front, really stood for Benjamin Franklin, Paul Pry had cultivated Gilvray as a pet aversion.
Mugs Magoo gathered up his pencils, put them in a voluminous pocket, scooped the few silver coins from his hat, got to his feet, and walked away.
—
The portly man continued to stand in dignified meditation, his eyes fixed upon the door of the Sixth Merchants & Traders National Bank. For anything that appeared in his face or figure to the contrary, he might have been a Wall Street banker, turning over in his mind the advisability of purchasing a controlling interest in the institution. Certainly no ordinary detective would ever have placed him as a gangster, scouting out information of value to his mob.
Five minutes passed. The gangster looked at his watch, and there was something impressive in the very motion of his well-manicured hand as he took the timepiece from his waistcoat pocket.
Two more minutes. There was the rumble of heavy wheels sounding a base note deeper than the whining tires of the lighter traffic. An armored truck rumbled to a stop before the side entrance of the bank.
Instantly special police cleared the space between door and truck. The end doors of the truck were opened. Two men with heavy revolvers bulging from shiny holsters stood at watchful attention. Employees of the bank trundled out two hand trucks loaded with small, but hea
vy, wooden boxes.
The boxes were checked, and flung into the armored truck. One of the armed men signed a paper. The steel doors clanged shut. The armed men entered the truck through another door which, in turn, clanged shut. Then there was the grating sound of bars sliding across steel. The special police walked back into the bank. The truck rumbled out into the stream of traffic, a rolling fortress, laden with wealth, impregnable.
The men inside had sub-machine guns, and were encased in bullet-proof steel. Little slits gave them opportunity to fire in any direction. Bullet-proof glass furnished their vision of the entire four points of the compass. There would be a special police escort waiting to receive the shipment at its destination. In the meantime, thousands of dollars worth of gold was being moved safely and efficiently through the streets of the city.
The sides of the truck bore a sign, printed in the small letters of a firm that deals with conservative institutions in a conservative manner. “Bankers’ Bonded Transportation Co.”
Paul Pry inspected the sign with eyes that were slitted in concentrated thought. The truck turned a corner and was lost to sight. The gangster took a notebook from his pocket, took out his watch, and made a notation, apparently of the exact time.
Paul Pry managed to get a look at the face of the gangster. It was wreathed in a smile of satisfaction.
In impressive dignity, the man walked away, and Paul Pry followed him.
He walked for two blocks, and then approached the curb. Almost instantly a huge, shiny machine drew up beside him. The car was driven by a slight individual whose skin was a dead white, whose eyes were pin-pointed, but steady. In the rear of the car sat a large man whose flashing eyes were as keen as darting rapiers. Bushy brows covered those eyes as thunderheads cover the first flashes of lightning from a coming storm.
This was Big Front Gilvray. He might have been a United States senator, or a big corporation lawyer. He was, in fact, a crook, and a leader among crooks. The police had never pinned anything definite upon Big Front Gilvray.
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 armored 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 curb.
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 name plate 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 graveled 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 center 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 armored 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 armored 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 armored 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 favorite drum as a violinist might select a favored 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 tho
ngs. 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 blood stream 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 somber. 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.”
And Paul Pry, continuing to chuckle, arose, hung up the ceremonial drum, and reached for his stick, which contained a sword of finest steel, his hat, and gloves.
“The bottle, Mugs, will have to do you for the rest of the day,” he said, and went out.
