The Dancing Doll Murders

CHAPTER V

IN the private dining room of a small but luxurious cafe, late that night, a tall, dark man ground out his cigarette. He glanced at his wristwatch, pushed his empty liquor glass away with a decisive gesture, and rose.

“You’re not leavin’, Blackie?” The girl sitting across from him spoke peevishly, her rouged lips drooping and her moist, blue-lidded, sinful eyes glowing with sudden resentment.

“Gotta,” said the dark man quickly.

“Where you goin’?” The girl’s voice was sharp, quavering. But Blackie merely raised his eyebrows, stretched out his chin, and adjusted the knot of his tie. He didn’t speak again till she laid a tense hand on his arm, her fingers with their tinted nails looking like bloodstained claws. Her face had lost its beauty as anger possessed her.

She grew ugly, sluttish. “Blackie, if you’re two-timin’ -” she began.

But the man called Blackie whirled on her so fiercely that she shrank away. “Keep that big trap shut, Dolly! When I get another dame you’ll know it. I’ll drop you like a hunk of hot lead. But until then mind your own business if you know what’s healthy. I got other things to do besides play ‘round with janes.”

“Sorry, Blackie, I didn’t mean any harm!” the girl whimpered.

Blackie Guido turned away contemptuously, picked up his coat and hat. He knew how to handle his dames, and make them toe the mark, just as he knew how to buy flashy clothes and wear them. He didn’t welcome advice, nor like his actions questioned. And right now he was riding high. There was a roll of bills in his pocket that would choke a mule. He was definitely in the dough.

Not since the violent days of prohibition when he had been the pilot of a fleet of beer trucks had he had so much jack to fling around. But just how he had acquired it was a closely guarded secret. He stood at the door for a moment, a dapper figure in a Chesterfield and derby hat, spats and kid gloves. Then he peeled a fifty-dollar bill from his roll and tossed it to Dolly.

“Go get a mud pack and a permanent, sweetheart,” he said cheerfully. “Be seein’ you later.”

He was gone out into the night, swinging along the dark sidewalk like a lonely ghoul. It was so late that the streets were almost deserted. A few nighthawk taxis cruised aimlessly, their drivers slumped and tired.

Blackie took one, rode ten blocks, puffing a cigarette and looking warily behind him. There was no other car in sight, no one pursuing. But for some reason Blackie Guido was taking no chances on being followed. He got out, paid his fare, walked through a cross street, and took another taxi. He repeated the process four times before he finally alighted and walked the rest of the way to his destination.

Dolly, if she could have seen the furtive way he moved along a dark residential street and approached the gate of a big, old-fashioned house surrounded by a high brick wall, would have been sure he was two-timing. But there were no lights in that big house, no living thing to be seen.

Blackie closed and locked the gate behind him, moved across a wide lawn as stealthily as a shadow, unlocked another door in the house itself, and entered. It had once been a millionaire’s show place with every sort of luxury and fine appointment. But it had been deserted for years, tied up in an estate that couldn’t be settled. Its ornate decorations were torn and tarnished.

Blackie went down to the basement, passed through a gun room, a billiard room, and then into a gymnasium. A small flashlight shaped like a fountain pen guided his way. He pressed a switch, and the big gym with its shuttered windows sprang into light.

There were evidences that some work had been done here recently. The tiled floor was swept. The benches had been painted. The sparse furniture was in fair condition. The big swimming pool at one end of the gym was filled almost to the brim with dark, stagnant water.

Blackie walked to this. At the wall at the edge of the pool, he drew aside a bit of loose molding and pressed a small electric button a dozen times in a series of signals. Then he took a seat near the pool and puffed a cigarette impatiently. His face seemed more colorless now. His expression wasn’t quite so bland as it had been.

At the end of five minutes a strange thing happened. The still water in the center of the pool grew agitated. Bubbles came up and broke sluggishly on the greasy surface. Then suddenly something round and black rose above the water.

It thrust up out of the pool like a bud of a horrible, quick-growing plant, or like an aquatic monster. It was the helmeted head of a man dressed in a diving suit. The man’s shoulders followed. He stood poised on the top rung of a tall step ladder anchored just below the surface The single round glass window in the front of the helmet was turned toward Blackie Guido. There was a faint suggestion of two gleaming eyes peering through the glass.

Guido hunched forward. He was a practical soul, not particularly impressed with all this mummery. But he had awed respect for the brains, the power, and the utter cruelty of the man inside that helmet. This awe was tinged with a sense of mystery, for, though the man was his employer, Blackie had not learned his identity in more than a dozen meetings. It didn’t bother him though.

He knew that the helmet, the diving suit, and the swimming pool were ways of keeping that identity hidden and a means of quick escape. For the under-water entrance to the pool was as great a mystery to Guido as the man in the pool himself.

The stranger paid him lavishly with high denomination bills, sent through the mail, done up in neat packets. Not hot money; but bona fide United States currency that could be shoved safely through the barred window of any bank in the land. In return for this Guido took orders and carried out certain instructions.

But Guido, though his face was pale and his muscles unnaturally tense, tried not to show too much deference. Never kowtow to any man, was his motto.

“How yer, Chief?” he said, waving his cigarette.

“Excellent, Guido!”

The voice of the helmeted man was sepulchral, blurred, strangely disguised as it came through a buzzing diaphragm in the helmet. He waited, head and shoulders thrust above the water with the ponderous poise of some aquatic creature.

Blackie launched upon a complaining tirade at once.

“That guy, Squires! It wasn’t on the schedule tonight that we should bump him! When a fella called and said the Chief wanted him put on the spot I thought there was something screwy. But I didn’t dare lay off -”

“Right, Guido – it wasn’t screwy.” A grating snicker echoed through the gym. “If you hadn’t seen to his – elimination – he would have spilled something that would have sent you to the chair eventually. You’d have fried, Guido, if you’d failed to arrange his murder.”

Blackie moved uneasily in his seat. “What the hell, Chief!”

“And that isn’t all,” the blurred voice continued. “Get this, Guido! From now on we’ve got to watch our step. We’ve got to be bold but careful. Before your men blasted him, that damned lawyer, Squires, asked that the Phantom be called in.”

“The Phantom!” The words came from Guido in a whisper and his eyelids quivered.

“Yes, the Phantom! But don’t let that scare you. Just be careful and keep your shirt on. He’s clever, slippery as lightning, hard to grab hold of as the wind – but he’s only human. Hot lead in his belly will do the trick! We’ll settle with him soon enough. But right now there’s something else to think of. Are you ready to see to Blackwell?”

“Not tonight, Chief! It’s too risky. One of the boys says there’s cops down there. They went out for some sort of powwow.”

“Don’t be a fool, Guido. There are only a few cops, only a handful. They can’t stop you. Blackwell must die tonight. He’s got one of the little figures. Your three hopheads can do the job in spite of the cops. Use your brains, Guido – or if you can’t – follow my instructions.”

Guido listened while the mysterious, helmeted figure spoke harshly. His head bobbed in acquiescence a moment later. He was ready to put into action quick plans for Black-well’s death.

OUT on the bleak finger of Channel Point, Dick Van Loan waited. He knew the danger he faced. Twice tonight the murderers had struck, ruthlessly, swiftly, proving that they were ready to take any sort of chances. Even after he’d assumed the disguise of Blackwell, Inspector Farragut had begged him to give the thing up.

“You can’t get away with a stunt like this, Phantom,” Farragut had insisted. “You don’t know enough about the killers, how they’ll strike, nor from what direction. You’re headed straight for suicide, man!”

When Van refused to be dissuaded, Farragut had insisted on stationing a handful of plainclothes men among the bushes along the road leading to the end of the point.

“They won’t interfere unless you want ‘em to,” he had promised. “But they’ll be there if they’re needed.”

Van didn’t expect to call the detectives. He was on his own now, fighting the black menace of murder in his own peculiar way. Combating crime was the grim work to which he’d pledged his life. He was touched, too, by the fact that the murdered Squires had known of his reputation and asked for his help. The Phantom must keep faith with the dead!

All his artistry at disguise had gone into his impersonation of Simon Blackwell. A clever toupe held the hairs of a stiff, grey pompadour. Special facial moulage heightened the bridge of his nose and gave him a hawklike look. He had simulated the deathly pallor of the recluse’s skin. Besides this, Van’s muscular control, developed through long practice, made it possible for him to move and carry himself with the same tense energy that characterized Blackwell. Posture was as much a part of his disguises as make-up. He was Blackwell to all intents and purposes.

Even the witchlike old servant mistook him for her master. When she had questioned him on his return as to why the police had taken him to the city, Van had growled at her fiercely, in the manner of Blackwell:

“None of your business, Sarah! The stupid, blundering fools -”

He had ordered her to her room and had gone grumbling, cursing, and stamping to his own chamber.

But instead of undressing, he had taken off his shoes, turned out the lights, and begun prowling around the house in darkness when he was sure Sarah was asleep. The gusty snoring of the old woman left no room for doubt.

Van could see the flickering headlights of the dump trucks as they rattled along the road from the subway excavation. The night shift was at work. The trucks were kept busy a full twenty-four hours. One arrived at the point about every half hour, disgorging the sludge and blue clay that had been the dead man’s clue.

With this activity going on, with detectives watching, it didn’t seem possible that the killers would strike tonight. But Van’s sense of impending danger deepened with every passing minute. Dimly he felt that he was pitted against a ruthless, cunning brain that would not be swerved from its course by any obstacle.

He had no definite plan of action. He was alert for trouble, ready to take advantage of any opportunity that came to get better acquainted with the criminals. He wanted to probe the hidden well springs of murder, find out who was behind the dancing doll killings and what the motive was.

He went to the back of the house, looked out, and drew in a hissing breath. He was certain now that the killers planned a murderous follow-up to the sending of the doll to Simon Blackwell. For, as he crouched by a window of the dismal cottage, a shadow moved out on the river. He caught sight of it briefly when the headlight beam from a dump truck swung that way. Then darkness swallowed it again.

It was a small speedboat, near shore, wallowing lazily in the oily swells. He could make out no one on it, only a black hull low down on the water, the bow pointed, the stern coffin-shaped. He thought for a few minutes that the killers planned to land at the tip of the point. But the boat came no nearer. And suddenly Van rose and whirled toward the front of the cottage as the whining roar of a motor sounded.

He leaped to another window, crouched, peered out. The headlights bored straight at him, satanic eyes coming nearer and nearer in the darkness. Metal clattered. Huge tires jounced through frozen ruts. One of the big dump trucks seemed to have run amuck like a mad colossus, or the man driving it had gone berserk.

The truck came plunging on wildly, away from the filled-in ground, straight toward the barbed-wire fence that barred the road in front of the cottage.

Then Van heard cries and shots. Farragut’s men in the bushes, unable to resist the temptation to interfere, had ordered the truck to halt, and fired when it didn’t.

A dancing point of flame leaped from a spot near the top of the truck’s metal body. A machine-gun clattered, drowning out the lesser fire of the police automatics. The night broke into hideous pandemonium as death hurtled at the Phantom.