"Dick Tracy": Pruneface Trivia Quiz

Answer: a hand

A nearly dead man grabs Juniors ankle and pulls him down into a secret room underneath the barn where there is a well stocked laboratory. Tracy recognizes the effects of poison gas and they evacuate. The man soon dies from the gas and is revealed to be George Bullet, county police chief.
George Bullet's son, Cal, does a credible job of grieving, but begins to act strange when evidence is presented, prompting Tracy to wonder if they might have a patricide to investigate.

Answer: The playing room of the Request Jukebox Company

Thinking the clue was a hoax, Tracy and Junior decide to see one of the jukeboxes anyway. As they talk to the barman, Junior sees Cal Bullet entering. From their hidden location, the Tracys see Cal talking into the microphone on the jukebox.
Remembering the year is 1942, this jukebox is operated by putting a nickel in the machine and requesting the desired song through the microphone. In this case the playing room is in the basement below and the girl, Clara, puts on the request.
Clara, however, is the messenger between Cal and his boss, a man named Boche. In this case Cal is requesting a new laboratory to continue his experiments.

Answer: furnace

Pruneface has more tricks up his sleeve than James Bond. Cal Bullet has brought him samples of his nerve gas encased in gelatin capsules. Pruneface ties Cal and casually tosses the capsules into the light fixture, where the heat from the light bulbs will melt the gelatin and the gas will escape, killing its inventor.

Then he walks onto the adjacent roof and flies his helicopter three blocks away, where his Japanese henchman, Togo, hydraulically lowers it off the rooftop. A gloating Pruneface walks the street, watching the 'mad fools scramble around'.

The 'mad fools', however, trace the ownership of Prunefaces former residence to the one he now resides in. They were owned by the same person. Pruneface is forced to run while Togo is arrested.

Answer: Mrs. Trueheart

Pruneface is overjoyed with his room, and is most polite to Tess and Mrs. Trueheart. His typewriter is really a radio, he has batteries to run it and his umbrella is made of copper, a perfect antenna for sending messages to 'his countrymen'.

Answer: parts for bomb sights

Siella is Allies spelled backwards, of course. His plan is to make a machine which will fit on one rail of the railroad track he has noticed slopes downward to the plant. There will be an appropriate amount of nitroglycerine on the machine to destroy the building.
But not only has Tess Trueheart became suspicious, but Mrs. Trueheart has as well. Mrs. Trueheart swipes the machine Pruneface has made and hands it off to Junior to take to headquarters.

Answer: broken leg

Pruneface manages to get to a doctor, who recognizes him. But this guy is tough. When told he'd have to be put under, Pruneface said (gun in hand), "You set the leg. I'll take it with my eyes open!"
He then calls his partner, Number Twenty, who rescues him and kidnaps the doctor, who has alerted his nurse. An ambulance arrives and Number Twenty steals it.

Answer: the house number

After Number Twenty ditched the ambulance, police found the broken house number inside and Dick Tracy instructed mailmen to keep watch for a house with that number missing.
Number Twenty is one of my favorite 'secondary' characters. He is as ugly as any of the main characters, yet has the sophisticated air of a spy. Writer Chester Gould was so good especially through the 1940s that he would kill off many of these wonderful characters, only to create new ones for the next story.

Answer: a secret tunnel

What would "Dick Tracy" be without secret doors, tunnels, etc.? The other end of his tunnel is inside a mailbox. But a police car is parked beside it and he can't get the door open. Returning to the house, he finds Pruneface standing, gun in hand. As Number Twenty begins to beg, he is shot to death. Pruneface tells the doctor to pick Twenty up and carry him outside.

Answer: freeze him out

Dick Tracy considered tear gas, but decided Pruneface was too weak to survive, and they wanted him alive. Police cut the gas line and broke the windows with rocks. Pruneface is defiant to the end, vowing to shoot Tracy first then kill himself.

Answer: a piece of glass fell on his wrist

A piece of glass cut his wrist and he dropped the gun, but he was too weak to move. Taken out on a stretcher, the fate of Pruneface was simple according to Chief Brandon-"Hospital, county jail, electric chair". But apparently he didn't make it that far.
Less than a year later the Mrs. Pruneface story begins and she was out for revenge for his death.
Pruneface was brought back in the early 1980s by writer Max Allen Collins. It seems Mr. Kryos Freezedri was on staff at the hospital when Pruneface arrived. Freezedri was even then experimenting with cryogenics and froze Pruneface before he died. By the end of the story, Pruneface was handcuffed and flown out of the country by a mysterious man with a number tattooed on his wrist, and the Freezedri Institute burned to the ground with other frozen patients inside-one looking a lot like Adolph Hitler.