The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  The house of Big Front Gilvray showed as a gloomy and silent pile of darkness. There was no sign of light from the windows, no sound of occupancy from within. The house was shrouded in watchful silence. But it was a tense silence. One sensed that perhaps there might be a cautious face, pressed against the glass of an upper window, surveying the street—that other faces at the four corners of the house might be cautiously inspecting the night.

  —

  It was a full half hour before Paul heard the wail of a siren, the sound of a clanging gong. The street reflected the rays of a red spotlight. The police were going to make something of a ritual of it. They had brought the patrol wagon with them.

  Paul Pry walked down the street to the place where he had left his roadster, got in, started the motor, and warmed up the engine. Then he switched off the ignition the better to hear any sounds that the night had to offer.

  The wagon drew up to the big residence with something of a flourish.

  “Here we are, boys!” yelled someone. “Lookit the car! It’s the kind Bill said, and the front fender’s caved.”

  Another voice growled, “Drag him out.”

  The police car discharged figures who moved with grim determination up the walk to the house. The front steps boomed the noise of their authoritative feet into the night, and there came the sound of nightsticks beating a tattoo upon wooden panels.

  But the door didn’t open immediately.

  The house gave forth signs of muffled activity. Then a porch light clicked on, and Big Front Gilvray stood in the doorway, his frame blocking out the soft glow from a lighted hallway.

  Big Front lived true to his name. He put on a bold front. Behind him there were men armed with machine guns, determined to sell their lives as dearly as possible; but these men were out of sight, hidden where their guns could sweep hallways and staircases with the most deadly angle of fire.

  Paul Pry heard Gilvray’s booming voice.

  “What in hell is the meaning of this outrage?”

  It was Gilvray’s code to be impressive, always to keep the other man on the defensive.

  The only answer to the question was a counter question from one of the officers.

  “Are you Benjamin F. Gilvray of 7823 Maplewood Drive?”

  “I am. And I want to know—”

  What Big Front Gilvray wanted to know was drowned in the sound made by a heavy fist impacting soft flesh. There followed the scuffle of feet, the thud of blows. After an interval someone said, “You’re under arrest,” and a knot of struggling figures threshed their way toward the patrol wagon.

  There was the clanging of a bell, the wail of a siren, the roar of an exhaust, and the patrol wagon was on its way. From within could be seen moving figures, silhouetted against the lighted ribbon of roadway.

  Big Front Gilvray was resisting arrest and the figures were doing their stuff.

  Paul Pry started the motor on his car and slipped to the side street. From this position he could command a view of the alley entrance from the garages, also of the graveled driveway.

  Lights blazed on in the house, then were subdued. Doors banged. There was the sound of running steps. A car shot out of one of the garages, skidded at the turn into the side street, and roared into the night. It was filled with men.

  A truck followed. There were two men in the driver’s seat. The cargo of the truck was covered with canvas. It was not particularly bulky.

  Paul Pry followed the red light of the truck.

  He kept well to the rear, yet, with the flexibility of his powerful roadster, was able to command the situation. The truck could not get away. Paul Pry drove without headlights and was invisible to the occupants of the truck.

  The chase led for nearly a mile, and then the truck turned into a public garage. Paul Pry drove around the block and piloted his red roadster into the same garage.

  The truck of the gangsters was parked at one end of the place and a sleepy-eyed attendant came forward with a ticket. His eyes were swollen with sleep, and he sucked in a prodigious yawn as he stretched his hands high above his head.

  “I’d better park it,” said Paul Pry. “The reverse is sticking a little.”

  The man in the dirty overalls yawned again and sleepily pushed a ticket into the crack over the hinges of the hood. That ticket was numbered, a string of black figures on a red background. The other half of the ticket, bearing a duplicate number, he thrust into Paul Pry’s hand.

  “Right next to the truck?” asked Paul casually, and didn’t wait for an answer.

  He drove the car down the dimly lit aisle of the garage, backed it into the first vacant stall to the side of the truck, switched off motor and lights, and got out.

  It was, perhaps, significant that he got out of the car on the side that was nearest the truck, and that his hand rested against the hood of the powerful truck as he walked between the stalls.

  In the dim light of the place, the sleepy-eyed attendant had no idea that Paul Pry was switching squares of pasteboard, that the red ticket which had been thrust into the hood of the roadster now adorned the truck, and that the truck ticket was transferred to the roadster.

  Paul Pry had hardly intended to play the game in just that manner. He felt certain the gangsters, alarmed over the arrest of Big Front Gilvray, would transfer the treasure cargo, but he had hardly counted upon the audacious move by which they sought to insure safety for themselves.

  It was simple. The very simplicity of it was its best protection. They felt the police might be on their trail. Therefore the thing to do was to place the stolen cargo where it would never be found. What more simple solution than to treat the boxes of gold as just an ordinary truck cargo, park the truck for the night, and make no further move until they heard from Gilvray.

  If the police had the goods on Gilvray, the gangsters could take the truck’s cargo, transfer it to fast touring cars and leave the city. If it was a false alarm, the gold was removed from the house which might be searched on general principles. If the police had complete information and knew the emergency headquarters the gang had established, a raid would reveal no incriminating evidence.

  —

  Paul Pry, however, was an opportunist. He had intended only to make certain that the gold was collected in one place, and then notify the police of that hiding place and claim the reward. As it was, he had an opportunity to make a much more spectacular recovery of the treasure, and leave the gang intact—an organization of desperate criminals, ready to commit other crimes upon which Pry might capitalize.

  So it happened that when Pry left the garage he had with him a square of pasteboard containing a number, and, upon that truck with its illegal cargo, was a duplicate ticket containing the same number.

  Paul Pry chuckled to himself as he walked out into the night.

  He telephoned Sergeant Mahoney at headquarters.

  “Pry talking, Sergeant. There’s a reward out for the recovery of the gold that was slicked from the Sixth Merchants & Traders National?”

  “I’ll say there is. You haven’t got a lead on it, have you?”

  “Yeah. What say you drive out to the corner of Vermont and Harrison? I’ll meet you there with the gold. You take the credit for the recovery and keep my name out of it. We split the reward fifty-fifty.”

  The sergeant cleared his throat.

  “I’d like to do that all right, Pry. But it happens you’ve figured in two or three rewards lately. How come you get the dope so easily?”

  Paul Pry laughed. “Trade secret, Sergeant. Why?”

  “Well, you know, someone might claim you were pulling the crimes in order to get the rewards.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sergeant. If I’d taken the risk of pulling this job I wouldn’t surrender the coin for a fraction of its value. These boxes don’t contain jewels. They contain gold coin and currency. I could take the stuff out and spend it—if I didn’t want to turn it back. But if you think it might make trouble, we’ll just forget it and I won’t back
the shipment and you can go ahead and work on the case in your own way.”

  “No, no, Pry! I was just thinking out loud. You’re right. The corner of Harrison and Vermont? I’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

  Paul Pry hung up the telephone, then rang his apartment. Mugs Magoo answered the ring.

  “You drunk, Mugs?”

  “No.”

  “Sober?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Get a cab and pick up a pair of overalls and a cap, also a jumper. Get a leather coat if you can’t get a jumper. Bring them to me in a rush. You’ll find me at a drug store out on Vermont, near a Hundred and Tenth Street. Make it snappy.”

  And Paul Pry settled himself comfortably in the drug store, picked up a magazine, purchased a package of cigarettes and prepared to enjoy himself.

  It took Mugs Magoo half an hour to bring the things. Paul Pry changed in the taxicab and arrived at the garage with clothes that were soiled and grimy. A little tobacco in his eyes gave them a reddened inflamed appearance.

  He was cursing when the sleepy-eyed attendant, dozing in a chair tilted back against the office wall, extended a mechanical hand.

  “That damned truck. Can you beat it? I don’t any more than get to sleep when the boss rings up and tells the wife I’ve got to take that load down to the warehouse tonight, pick up a helper and start on another trip.”

  The attendant looked at Paul Pry with a puzzled frown.

  “You the one that brought in that truck?”

  Paul yawned and flipped him the red pasteboard.

  “Uh huh,” he said.

  The attendant walked back to the truck, compared the numbers on the tickets, nodded.

  “Your face looked familiar, but I thought—”

  He didn’t finish what he had thought.

  Paul Pry got in the truck, switched on the ignition, got the motor roaring to life, turned on the headlights and drove to the street. Mugs Magoo in the taxicab, an automatic clutched in his left hand, guarded the rear. The treasure truck rumbled down the boulevard.

  At the corner of Harrison, Sergeant Mahoney was parked in a police car. He shook hands with Paul Pry and ran to the canvas-covered cargo of the truck. A moment’s examination convinced him.

  “God, there should be a promotion in this!”

  Paul Pry nodded.

  “You drive the truck to headquarters. Claim you shook the information out of a stoolie. I’ll drive your roadster to my apartment. You can have one of your men pick it up later. By the way, I’ve got a red roadster out at Magby’s Garage, a mile or so down the street. I’ve lost my claim check for it. Wish you’d send a squad out there and tell the garage man it’s a stolen car. You can leave it in front of my apartment when you pick up your car.”

  Sergeant Mahoney surveyed Paul Pry with eyes that were puckered to mere glinting slits.

  “Did you switch tags and steal this truck, son?”

  Paul Pry shook his head. “I can’t very well answer that question.”

  “Afraid of something? You’d have police protection if you committed a technical robbery of a gangster truck.”

  Pry laughed. “No. There’s a more personal reason than that.”

  “Which is?”

  “That I don’t want to kill the goose that’s laying my golden eggs.”

  Sergeant Mahoney emitted a low whistle.

  “Golden eggs is right! But you’re monkeying with dynamite, son. You’ll be pushin’ up daisies if you play that game.”

  “Possibly,” agreed Paul Pry. “But, after all, that’s what makes the game more interesting. And it’s something that’s entirely between me and—”

  “And who?” asked the officer eagerly.

  “And a gentleman to whom I have presented a new car,” said Paul Pry. With which cryptic remark, he walked toward the police roadster.

  “Take good care of that truck, and good night, Sergeant. Let me know about your promotion.”

  The sergeant was clambering into the driver’s seat of the truck as Paul Pry stepped on the starter of the police roadster. In the morning another consignment of golden eggs would find its way to him—one half of the reward money posted by the bank for a loss which it might have prevented.

  Rogue: Kek Huuygens

  Sweet Music

  ROBERT L. FISH

  AS HE TELLS IT in the introduction to Kek Huuygens, Smuggler (1976), Robert Lloyd Fish (1912–1981) was living in Rio de Janeiro, working as a civil engineer and trying to work on his golf game when a friend told him of a man who had legally—well, almost legally—smuggled five million dollars into the United States from Belgium. Fish was already writing Sherlock Holmes parodies featuring Schlock Holmes and detective novels about Jose da Silva, a Brazilian police detective, but he thought this story was too good to ignore, so he went on to write several clever stories and a novel, The Hochmann Miniatures (1967), about Huuygens, who was born in Poland, had a Dutch name, and carried a valid American passport.

  During his career, Fish wrote more than thirty novels, won three Edgar Awards (for The Fugitive, the best first novel of 1962; for Bullitt, the best motion picture of 1969, based on his novel Mute Witness, published under his Robert L. Pike pseudonym; and for “The Moonlight Gardener,” the best short story of 1971), was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America, and left the legacy of the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award, sponsored by his estate, that has given an annual award since 1984 for the best first short story by an American author as selected by MWA.

  “Sweet Music” was originally published as a complete story within the novel The Hochmann Miniatures (New York, New American Library, 1967). It was first collected in Kek Huuygens, Smuggler (New York, Mysterious Press, 1976).

  SWEET MUSIC

  Robert L. Fish

  THE MONTH WAS SEPTEMBER, the place was Paris, and the weather was hot.

  Claude Devereaux, one of the large and overworked staff of customs inspectors at the incoming-passenger section of Orly airport, tilted his stiff-brimmed cap back from his sweating forehead, leaned over to scrawl an indecipherable chalkmark on the suitcase before him, and then straightened up, wondering what imbecile had designed the uniform he wore, and if the idiot had ever suffered its heavy weight on a hot day. He nodded absently to the murmured thank you of the released passenger and turned to his next customer, automatically accepting the passport thrust at him, wondering if there might still be time after his shift to stop for a bière before going home. Probably not, he thought with a sigh, and brought his attention back to business.

  He noted the name in the green booklet idly, and was about to ask for declaration forms, when he suddenly stiffened, the oppressive heat—and even the beer—instantly forgotten. The bulletins on the particular name he was staring at filled a large portion of his special-instruction book. His eyes slid across the page to the smiling, rather carefree photograph pasted beside the neat signature, and then raised slowly and wonderingly to study the person across the counter.

  He saw a man he judged to be in his early or middle thirties, a bit above medium height, well dressed in the latest and most expensive fashion of the boulevardier, with broad shoulders that seemed just a trifle out of proportion with his otherwise slim and athletic body. The thick, curly hair, a bit tousled by a rather bumpy ride over the Alps, was already lightly touched with gray; it gave a certain romantic air to the strong, clean-shaven face below. Mercurial eyebrows slanted abruptly over gray eyes that, the official was sure, undoubtedly proved very attractive to women. He came to himself with a start; at the moment those gray eyes were beginning to dissipate their patience under the other’s blatant inspection. Claude Devereaux suspected—quite rightly—that those soft eyes could become quite cold and hard if the circumstances warranted. He bent forward with a diffident smile, lowering his voice.

  “M’sieu Huuygens…”

  The man before him nodded gravely. “Yes?”

  “I am afraid…”

  “Afraid of what?” Kek Huu
ygens asked curiously.

  The official raised his shoulders, smiling in a slightly embarassed manner, although the glint in his eyes was anything but disconcerted.

  “Afraid that I must ask you to step into the chief inspector’s office,” he said smoothly, and immediately raised his palms, negating any personal responsibility. “Those are our instructions, m’sieu.”

  “Merde! A nuisance!” The gray eyes studied the official thoughtfully a moment, as if attempting to judge the potential venality of the other. “I don’t suppose there is any other solution?”

  “M’sieu?”

  “No, I suppose not.” The notion was dismissed with an impatient shake of the head. “Each and every time I come through French customs! Ridiculous!” He shrugged. “Well, I suppose if one must, one must.”

  “Exactly,” Devereaux agreed politely. What a story to tell his wife! No less a scoundrel than the famous Kek Huuygens himself had come through his station in customs, and had actually tried to bribe him! Well, not exactly to bribe him, but there had been an expression in those gray eyes for a moment that clearly indicated…The inspector dismissed the thought instantly. If his wife thought for one minute that he had turned down a bribe, she would never let him hear the end of it. Better just tell her…He paused. Better say nothing at all, he thought sourly, feeling somehow deprived of something, and then became aware that he was being addressed. He came to attention at once. “M’sieu?”

  “The chief inspector’s office? If you recall?”

  “Ah, yes! If m’sieu will just follow me…”

  “And about my luggage?”

  “Your luggage?” Claude Devereaux looked along the now vacant wooden counter, instantly brought from his dream, immediately on the alert. The bulletins had been most definite about this one! Watch him! Watch him constantly! Watch his every move! His eyes returned to the man before him suspiciously.

  “You mean your briefcase? Or is there more?”

  “It’s all I have, but it’s still my luggage.” Kek suddenly smiled at the other confidingly, willing to let bygones be bygones, accepting the fact that the inspector was merely doing his job. “I prefer to travel light, you know. A toothbrush, a clean pair of socks, a fresh shirt…” He looked about easily, as if searching out a safe spot where no careless porter might inadvertently pick up the briefcase and deposit it unbidden at the taxi-rank, or where someone with less honest intent might not steal it. “If I might leave it someplace out of the way…”