The Phantom Detective - The Dancing Doll Murders Page 4

  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.”<
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  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.

  CHAPTER VI

  MURDER MENACE

  NO mistaking the meaning of that plunging truck. This was the way the killers had taken to gain entrance and batter down all barriers. They had slain or knocked out the lawful driver, stolen the truck.

  Their machine-gun cut a swathe of destruction through the night. Van couldn’t see its effect. But he felt certain that some of Farragut’s men were being mowed down by that hail of bronze-jacketed lead. The crashing of the police positives seemed more intermittent now.

  The truck came on to the barbed-wire gate. It appeared to crouch for a split second, a gleaming-eyed monster gathering itself for a fresh burst of speed. Then its bumper struck the frame of the gate. It plunged through splintering boards like matchwood, snapping barbed wire strands as though they were cotton threads. It wallowed on toward the house, its motor thundering.

  Van watched, lynx-eyed, his fingers clawlike over the black butt of his automatic. A moment later he leaped back from the window and whirled. He felt the whole house shudder as the vehicle struck. Timbers snapped. Boards grated. The huge truck squalled to a stop.

  Half the porch and a corner of the cottage had been ripped wide open. Night wind rushed in, chill with the presentiment of death. Van heard the killers calling to each other. There seemed to be several of them on board the truck, assassins worked up to a fever pitch of excitement, thirsting for human blood.

  The machine-gun yammered again. Out in the darkness police automatics answered. Lead struck the body of the stalled truck, screaming away into the night like a frightened wraith fleeing a scene of murder.

  Tiptoeing close to the broken corner of the building, Van heard one of the killers call out an order.

  “Go in an’ get ‘im, Dopey! Rip ‘im wide open. We’ll hold off the lousy coppers.”

  “Okay,” came the snarled answer. “Leave the old guy to me!”

  A black figure detached itself from the truck. It slipped through the broken hole in the building, came on purposefully; and Van caught a brief glimpse of light reflected from a machine-gun’s ugly snout. He tiptoed back into Blackwell’s bedchamber, spoke in the harsh, querulous voice of the recluse.

  “Who is it? What do you mean, you fools, smashing into my house?”

  The gunman couldn’t see him. Van took a desperate chance in that instant. For a flashlight stabbed toward him, bathing his disguised face, and Van waited. He knew that two hands are needed to hold and fire a machine-gun. Then the light went out. There was a ripping, vicious burst from the rapid-firer. The gun clattered like a mad thing out in the hallway in the hands of the killer who had entered.

  But Van had leaped far to the left of the doorway as soon as the light was extinguished. Bullets lashed empty space at the spot where he had been. He screamed now, the cry of a mortally wounded man, throwing his voice so that it seemed to come from straight in front of the gunman. Then he groaned realistically; snatched a quilt from the bed; flung it over a light, straight-backed chair; and, as the man came close, Van hurled the chair to the floor so that it fell with a convincing, muffled thud.

  The killer stepped through the bedroom door, brought his gun into action again, and pumped bullets viciously into what he thought was Blackwell’s prostrate body. Then he flicked on his flash to make sure his work was done.

  That was his last conscious act that night. Van got a brief glimpse of his savage face, flushed, with eyes that were unnaturally bright and glassy. A drug addict, pumped so full of the stuff that he was hardly human!

  Van leaped with the silent swiftness of a springing puma. The butt of his gun came down on the hophead’s skull. The man pitched forward, dropping his weapon without a moan. Van grabbed him by the collar, pulled his unconscious body away from the door into a corner of the room.

  He found the man’s flash, clicked the switch, and set it on a chair. For a tense minute, while the guns continued to blast outside, Van studied the drug addict’s still features. Then, working with desperate quickness, knowing that each split second was precious, he began removing his disguise of Simon
Blackwell. It had served its purpose, drawn the murderous fire of the killer, letting those outside know that Dopey had found his prey. After the wig had been withdrawn, the moulage scraped off, Van began a new impersonation. This must be another masterpiece.

  There was no time for finesse. No time even to study his subject as he would have liked to. The Phantom was about to take a seemingly suicidal step. It wasn’t the first time he’d used disguise to thrust himself into direct contact with dangerous criminals. He’d done it before. It had brought him close to death on several occasions. Some day he would slip up, take one chance too many, but until then —

  He took out a mirror. His long fingers, dipping into the auxiliary make-up kit he always carried, began spreading red pigment over his face, covering Blackwell’s deathly pallor, imitating Dopey’s hectic, narcotic flush. He worked swiftly, surely, with the deftness of an actor between scenes who knows he has only a minute or two before the curtain rises.

  He dabbed black wax, a coal tar derivative, on his teeth to simulate Dopey’s broken snags. He thrust a spongy pad under his lower lip in imitation of the man’s prognathous mouth. He widened both nostrils with hollow, truncated cones of red celluloid, kept for such a purpose. He rose, so monstrously changed that his own mother wouldn’t have known him.

  Already the killers outside called to him blasphemously. Van snatched up the hophead’s hat, drew off his coat, slipped into it. He grabbed the machine-gun, stepped over Dopey’s inert body, and plunged into the hall.

  “Okay, pals!” he called loudly, imitating Dopey’s snarling voice, which he had picked up from hearing that one sentence spoken.

  A volley of curses almost as scorching as bullets met him when he slipped outside.

  “What the hell kept you, mug? Does it take all night to croak one spavined old guy?”

  A flashlight flicked into Dick Van I Loan’s face. He knew he stood on the brink of death, for his make-up, put on so quickly, could hardly be exact. But he grinned wickedly, showing his blackened teeth, holding out a wad of bills he had taken from his own pocket.