The Phantom Detective - The Dancing Doll Murders

by Robert Wallace

  “So that’s why she raised the window?”

  “Exactly! If she’d showed me the letter Marie handed her, taken me into her confidence, I would have understood the situation and explained to her that it was obviously a trap.” Van drove one fist into his palm fiercely. “That’s the damnable part of it! You can see how shrewdly the murderer’s mind worked! He knew the one thing that Mrs. Tyler would not confide to the police was the fact that she was carrying on an intrigue. He knew that the note was not only sure, but perfectly safe bait.”

  “You mean this man across the court was working in league with that devil up on the roof?” Farragut growled. “He wrote the note so she’d lean out the window and give the other guy his chance to strangle her.” The policeman shook his head.

  “No,” said Van, “I don’t mean that. The killer knew we’d find that note on her — after it was too late to save her. If the man called Henry were guilty of helping in her murder he wouldn’t leave written evidence for the police to find. Henry’s innocent of everything except making love so clumsily that a third party discovered it. This note is a clever forgery. The timing of it was too perfect to be real. I tell you, Inspector, the man we’re up against not only knows the Caulder family, but he makes his moves with all the brilliance of a master at chess. We may trap a few of his pawns, but his gambit still has us guessing.”

  They left the window.

  “Wait till I see whether the boys have found anything on the roof,” Farragut snapped, “then I want to tell you something I’ve got on my mind, Phantom.”

  He hurried away. Van began pacing hands shoved deep in pockets face set grimly. He had a sense of keen disappointment, of failure, in the matter of Mrs. Tyler. He was angry with himself that he hadn’t forced her to show him the note. But after all, the woman was old enough to be her own mistress. The murderer must have taken that, too, into consideration. The leering face of Satan himself seemed to lurk behind the identity of the Chief.

  Farragut returned, and said that his men hadn’t been able to find anything.

  “The strangler must have crossed over to the roof of another apartment building and got down that way. I didn’t figure men should be posted three stories up on the roof. How did I know Mrs. Tyler was going to open a window and stick her head out?”

  “You didn’t,” said Van grimly. “She practically committed suicide when she disobeyed your instructions.”

  Farragut nodded. “I did my best to protect her. She just ­wouldn’t let me. And now, Phantom, let’s see if we can’t get some things doped out straight. What happened tonight here proves to me what I’ve thought all along — one of the Caulder heirs is behind these murders! Not only that — I’ve got a theory who the guy is!” The inspector spoke with harsh conviction. He was obviously excited.

  Van looked interested. “Good!” he said. “Let’s hear it.”

  Farragut drew a black cigar from his pocket and bit off the end savagely. “It sounds screwy, I’ll admit. But this is a screwy case, and it must have a screwy answer. I’ve given the whole thing a lot of thought. The cops have a saying ‘once a killer, always a killer’ — and the man I suspect made his first kill ten years ago.”

  “You mean Judd Moxley?” said Van quickly.

  “Right! It wasn’t premeditated murder I know. I’ve gone over all the court records. He killed a pal in a fight after an all-night drinking session. But it showed the killer instinct. Now he’s had almost ten years in jail to think things over. He’s still a killer, but a crafty one this time.”

  VAN nodded. “Sounds logical, Inspector, but how about the little matter of his being in jail? I’ve reason to believe, as I’ve told you, that the man they call the Chief is the real brains behind this thing. And I’m practically certain that the Chief has visited, or intends to visit, at least one of his gang’s hideouts.”

  “Now we come to the screwy part of it,” said the inspector, looking wise. “I’ve been doing some investigating too, I’ve had a man nosing around up in the State pen. He’s uncovered something. There’s a wealthy prisoner, a banker who got too gay with other people’s dough, in a cell right next to Moxley’s. This banker’s still got plenty of kale. I’ve learned he tried to bribe one of the night guards to let him out for a few hours so he could visit his chorus girl sweetie. Of course he didn’t make it — the warden got wise. But how do we know another man mightn’t have succeeded where he failed? Far-fetched as it seems, how do we know Moxley hasn’t been getting in and out?”

  Van knitted his brows. “You may have something there. It checks up with the fact that the Chief seems to make his visits late at night. Let’s say, for the moment, that Moxley’s guilty. Have you figured a motive?”

  Farragut nodded. “I’ve got a certified copy of the Caulder will right from the probate court. That gives plenty of motive. Here —” Farragut took a legal paper in a blue folder from his pocket, opened it, and pointed to one page. “Erasmus Caul­der died in nineteen twenty-seven. Esmond Caulder was appointed administrator to take care of the fortune for ten years and then divide it among the heirs. It’s due to be handed to them some time this year. With Esmond Caulder on his deathbed they’re going to get it even quicker. And the will reads that the share of any heir who dies is to be divided among the others. You couldn’t have a much stronger motive for murder. If one heir can manage to bump off all the others he’ll get the entire fortune.”

  “That means that Eben Gray, Reggie Winstead, or even Simon Blackwell might be guilty,” said Van. “We’ve seen how shrewd the murderer is. Supposing that business of Black­well’s getting one of the dolls and being visited by the killers was just a stall? I’m not saying it was, but it might have been.”

  “Yeah, it might have been — but the smartest thing of all would be for a guy in prison to engineer these killings. You couldn’t pinch a fellow for murder if he could prove that all the time the murders were being committed he was in jail. Judd Moxley is the one heir who’s got an air-tight alibi — unless I can prove he’s been skipping in and out of the cooler while the killings were going on.”

  “I think I can help you on that,” said Van quickly. “I’m working on something right now. If it breaks right I hope to get a look at the king-pin murderer some time tonight. Suppose you have your man up at the pen keep his eye on Moxley every minute. If he stays in his cell, and if I get a look at the Chief tonight, we’ll know your theory is all wet and that Moxley isn’t guilty.”

  Farragut agreed. “But how in hell, Phantom, are you going to make contact with this Chief?”

  “That’s what I’m waiting to find out!” Van muttered.

  The phone in the Tyler apartment rang ten minutes later, while a police photographer was taking pictures of Mrs. Tyler’s body and after the medical examiner had made out his report. A detective answered it.

  “Huston of the Clarion wants to speak to Mr. Post,” he called. “Shall I tell the guy to get the hell off the wire and stop bothering us?”

  “I’ll take that call!” snapped Van, and he grabbed the phone out of the detective’s hand as though it were a life-and-death matter. “Rodney Post speaking. Go ahead, Huston!”

  The voice of the little newshound on the Clarion came over the wire holding a note of triumph. “I don’t know what it’s all about, Phantom; but I take it you’re making some fast plays as usual, And I’ve been working like a fool on that assignment. Anything I don’t know about that Dolly DeLong dame you could write on the back of a Christmas sticker.”

  “Swell!” said Van. “You’re tops, Steve. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

  Praise from the Phantom was sweet balm to Steve Huston. He began spouting facts about Dolly DeLong as though he were quoting from her life history.

  “Born in Milwaukee. Twenty-eight years old. Real name Fanny Green. Married a guy in Chicago in nineteen thirty. He got bumped off by the cops sticking up a slop joint in Cicero. She could hoof and sing a little and had a nifty shape. She came to the big town and land
ed a job in the Club Eldorado. Sings a bunch of mammy songs that are swell tear-jerkers. On big nights she doubles with a fan dance.”

  “Yes,” said Van. “And how about her friends?”

  “I was coming to that. I got chummy with the phone girl at the Chatterly like you suggested. I slipped her a few drinks at the bar and sure oiled her tongue. This Dolly DeLong dame is a one-man woman. Right now, anyway, she has to be. She’s mixed up with a guy named Blackie Guido who’s plenty tough. He phoned her this evening. She’s having dinner with him in the Rainbow Room of the San Carlo right after she’s finished her first hoof number. She wears size three-and-a-half shoes, likes Nuit d’Amour perfume, goes in big for caviar and truffles and —”

  Van cut him off. “Save the rest till I see you, Steve! You’ve told me all I want to know. I suggest that you call it a day, grab your best girl, and paint the town red — and, incidentally, charge all expenses to Rodney Post. You’ve earned it.”

  CHAPTER XII

  MASTER OF MURDER

  AT the Club Eldorado this was a big night. Unmindful that there were webs of murder whose sinister strands reached even to this place of garish gaiety, the city’s pleasure seekers were out in force. Every table was reserved.

  The dance floor was packed with swaying couples. The jazz band had worked itself into a red-hot frenzy. Champagne was flowing freely. Waiters were perspiring to keep pace with orders.

  The majestic doorman at the club entrance told Dick Van Loan, still in the disguise of Rodney Post, that only those who had made reservations could obtain tables. But money talks along New York’s bright-light district, near, as some wit put it, “Two-Times Square, the Double-cross Roads of the World.”

  The five dollar bill Van slipped the doorman got him inside. The twenty dollar bill he gave the captain of waiters made a small table magically appear where none had been before. From this vantage point, after the couples had gone back to their seats, Van watched the club’s floor show. He heard Dolly DeLong sing her mammy songs, saw her do her fan dance. She changed from a sobbing, husky-voiced crooner into a flitting, white-skinned moth parading her beauty under the spotlight.

  Van studied her face and noted her drooping lips, her lambent, blue-lidded eyes. Here was a glamour girl who might have held the interest of any playboy along Broadway, yet her heart’s fancy had been caught by a scheming criminal. Perhaps Dolly DeLong didn’t know what a dangerous man her companion, Blackie, was. Or perhaps, like other white moths, she felt the flame’s fascination.

  Van shrugged, rising before her number ended. He had stored the image of her face away in his mind. He wouldn’t forget it. He left the club quickly, hurried to the lobby of the Hotel San Carlo. There he bought himself a paper, lighted a cigarette, and settled down to wait. Over the top of his paper he watched the revolving doors.

  JUST twenty minutes later Dolly DeLong came through them, dressed in evening gown with an evening wrap now, her smoothly waved hair gleaming, silver slippers on her feet, A tall, dark man in a Chesterfield, derby, spats, and kid gloves was accompanying her.

  Van knew instantly that he was looking at “Blackie,” the head contact man in the strange murder ring. The clue of the orchid and Steve Huston’s patient inquiries had borne their fruit. Blackie, who thought he’d removed all evidence when he left his studio hideout, was now directly under the watchful eyes of the Phantom.

  He remained under surveillance for the next hour while he dined with Dolly DeLong. For Dick Van Loan got a table near them. Quietly he ate and relaxed after many sleepless hours, watching the man who got his orders straight from the Chief.

  Van had seen many men of Blackie Guido’s type before. But never one who, in appearance anyway, came up more completely to all the worst underworld traditions.

  GUIDO’S thin lips showed arrogance, cruelty. His handsome, swarthy face was an emotionless mask. His nose was predatory, the curved beak of a vulture. His eyes, polished, black, expressionless agates, spoke of a crafty brain. When he smiled it was with his white teeth only. His eyes remained unsmiling, calculating, critical, even when he looked at Dolly. Here, Van knew, was a dangerous criminal to whom murder would be mere routine. Here was a man who for money, would gladly deal in death.

  Van had left his own small, powerful coupé parked near the hotel. He paid his check, rose, and sauntered out just before Blackie Guido and Dolly DeLong finished their meal. He got in his coupé and waited, slouched in the shadows, until Guido and the girl came out. He saw Guido put Dolly DeLong in one taxi, then take another himself and drive away in the opposite direction.

  Van didn’t make the mistake of following too soon. He was an old hand and an expert at the difficult game of shadowing. He knew every maneuver, every trick. He had spotted the number of the taxi’s license and the cab’s color and shape. And his eyes were so far-sighted, so well trained in the observation of small details, that at times his range of vision seemed uncanny.

  He started his own coupé, swung it around after Guido’s cab was three full blocks away. He watched the traffic lights with hawklike attention. In them lay the greatest threat of defeat while shadowing a man by auto. There was the danger always that the car ahead might speed across a light that was just going red.

  Van might cross it, but that would arouse his quarry’s suspicions. It might also bring on the risk of a delaying argument with a traffic cop. So Van slowed when the lights first went green, sped up when they were about to change, timing his speed so perfectly that he was able to keep in the same block when cross traffic halted the taxi.

  He was close enough, five minutes later, to see Blackie Guido get out, pay his fare, and swing along the street. Fear clutched at Van’s heart for a moment. He thought that Guido might have suspected that he was being followed. Van drove on, staring straight ahead. But, in the windshield mirror, he saw Guido climb into another taxi. Guido’s movements seemed perfunctory, almost casual, Van sensed instantly then that this was just a routine. Guido wasn’t suspicious yet. He had merely schooled himself to take precautions.

  The chase went on while Van’s excitement grew. Much depended on his work tonight. The whole baffling case seemed to hang by a slender thread. If Guido became suspicious, got onto the fact that he was being followed, Van might never have another chance. He had never exerted himself so in his sleuthing as he did tonight.

  Once, when Guido changed taxis for the fourth time, Van almost missed out. For the new cab that Guido took shot off down a side street at an abrupt angle. Van pulled his coupé around in a screaming turn that almost wrecked it. A police whistle shrilled at him. He swung down a side street that paralleled the one Guido’s cab had taken, cut through another short block, and once again saw Guido’s taxi. Sweat dampened Van’s forehead now. The strain of the chase, the knowledge of what depended on it, created a suspense as great as any he’d felt so far.

  Ten blocks more and Guido’s cab approached a quiet, dark residential section of the city. Crime seemed far away from these dignified old brick and brownstone houses, these straight fences and small shadowed lawns. But once again Guido got out. And this time there was no other cab in sight, nor did there seem a likelihood of any approaching.

  Van had taken a chance as the streets grew darker and more deserted. He had switched off his coupé’s headlights. Now he was glad of it, For he knew that Guido, three blocks ahead, would hardly see him. He drew up to the curb, stopped slowly, waited.

  THE red tail-light of Guido’s cab moved off. Van could make out the criminal’s tall figure standing by the curb. Guido started walking up the block away from Van’s coupé, and Van climbed out and followed. It was easier now. On foot there were dozens of ways of avoiding and throwing off a quarry’s suspicion.

  Van kept to the darkest side of the walk, seemed to steal along like a prowling shadow. But he got steadily closer to the man ahead. He saw Guido stop at last before the high wall of what must once have been a luxurious mansion. A millionaire’s home, perhaps, back in the fading gl
ory of the Victorian era.

  Van dropped, flattened himself on the steps of a house, as Guido turned and looked up and down the street. Satisfied that all was safe, Guido stepped in close to the street wall. A moment later his tall figure disappeared. Faintly Van heard the sound of a hinge of a big rusty gate.

  His pulses hammered. He moved to the spot where he had last seen Guido, his steps more catlike than ever. Locks were no barrier to the Phantom. Early in his career he had known that he must make a close study of them. And when locks proved difficult he could fail back on the expert use of a jimmy.

  But he feared something else now. A criminal gang such as the one whose activities he was tracing would be likely to protect their hideout with some sort of an alarm system. So Van did not use his pass-keys on the gate Guido had gone through. And he was breathlessly cautious as he reached up to the top of the high brick wall.

  His fingers probed stealthily. He felt porcelain insulators directly behind the wall’s coping. His body stiffened. There must be a wire strung along them. Any contact with it would probably ring a bell.

  VAN used his body like an acrobat’s, brought into play those powerful muscles that he had trained and sharpened with the series of exercises a Japanese Samurai had taught him. With his fingertips barely touching the top bricks, he raised himself inch by inch on his arms, higher and higher, till his head and shoulders were above the top of the wall.

  Then, with arms stiff, his feet came up. He balanced there for a moment, seeming to defy gravitation, not touching that dangerous signal wire. His body appeared to ooze silently over it. In another moment he was sliding down the opposite face of the wall.

  He crouched in utter darkness for many seconds. Dimly, against the cloud reflection of the city beyond, he could see the silhouette of the big mansion. But there were no lights in it, no hint as to where Blackie Guido had gone.