Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

“What’s eatin’ you, Bowers? I said I’d come, didn’t I?”

BOWERS, so hoarse he was almost incoherent, spoke again. “That’s what I wanta tell yer! Don’t go to the shack, Blackie! I’m not there now – I’m callin’ from a pay station. All hell’s broke loose. A guy made up like Dopey came back with the boys. I don’t know where Dopey is, but this guy wasn’t him. We tried to smoke him, but he got away. We knew he’d bring cops, so we blew and set fire to the dump.”

Blackie swore so fiercely that the phone diaphragm rattled. “You thick-headed heel! You let this man get away – after I warned you about the Phantom! The Chief will have something to say about this, Bowers. He’ll probably can you.”

“How’d I know this guy who looked like Dopey was the Phantom?”

“You should keep your eyes open. That’s what you’re paid for. I tell you the Chief is gonna be so burned up he’ll blast the lid off Hell!”

The Chief! Van felt a sense of disappointment. Even this mysterious man, Blackie, then, wasn’t the murder gang’s head. There was more behind the thing than appeared, angles that steadily grew more puzzling. But whoever the Chief was, Blackie seemed to be the contact man. He was in a position to give orders to Bowers. He gave them now, after Bowers had told him the details of what had happened at the garage.

“There’s only one thing you can do, Bowers. Take your damn mugs and go to the other place I told you about. You’ve got a key. Lay low there. We don’t know how many of our heels the Phantom may have spotted. Until he’s dead you won’t any of you be safe. But go ahead with the job tomorrow evening. Call me back if anything more turns up. I’ll see you when I come to talk to the Chief tomorrow night.”

Blackie hung up. Dick Van Loan stood in tense silence. He had heard just enough to complicate still further the sinister riddle. He was getting closer, but the man called Blackie hadn’t given the location of the gang’s new hideout.

And he hadn’t said what the “job” was tomorrow evening. Van could guess that – another hideous murder! The links in the chain of death were not yet complete. Blackie had said that he would come to the hideout tomorrow night to speak to the chief.

That interested Dick Van Loan most of all. But to learn the identity of the Chief he must first get acquainted with Blackie. There was only one possible way to accomplish that. He’d have to trace that extension.

VAN LOAN began at once, while Hog-face still lay punch-drunk on the floor.

It would be getting light in an hour or two. He must make an examination of the immediate house before dawn came, before people were astir. He’d been lucky that his battle hadn’t disturbed other occupants of the building.

Or maybe there were none? Van didn’t know. But he was cautious as he commenced tracing down the wire.

Behind the wall shelf where the phone stood and where the plug-in socket had been fastened was a closet. A quick examination of this showed the extension wire leading down to the floor alongside the regular phone wire. Both disappeared through a hole which apparently led to the basement.

That disappointed Van. He had hoped and rather expected that the extension would be upstairs in another room of the same building. But he was dealing with crafty, desperate criminals, actors in a detailed plot who took pains to keep their tracks well covered.

He was certain he had a long job ahead of him when he found a trapdoor and a flight of stairs in the rear of the candy store and got down to the cellar. The regular telephone wire led outside to the yard, then off to a mainline conduit.

But the extension wire took a crazy course, doubling back on itself toward the front of the candy store. Here a hole had been bored into a galvanized leader pipe that came in from outside. The wire disappeared into this. Van reasoned that it wouldn’t be likely to lead into the city’s sewer system and must, therefore, lead up.

He went out into the street again, stared aloft, and could see the leader pipe ascending all the way to the roof. He couldn’t make out any wire branching off from it to any windows on other floors of the building.

Using a skeleton key, he let himself into a doorway beside the stone entrance, one that opened into a hall with stairs beyond. He climbed them on tiptoe, silent as a shadow, stopping to listen at every floor. No one was up yet, but already there were milk trucks rattling in the street below. The killers’ contact man might be in some one of these apartments. A hole for the wire might have been drilled through the leader pipe from the inside. There was no way to check that now.

But Van ascended all the way to a skylight, climbed a steep flight of steps, and eased himself out on the roof. He crossed to the top of the leader pipe quickly, and saw the wire snaking up. He traced it to what appeared to be a radio antenna pole, saw the wire stretch across space over a courtyard in the guise of an aerial.

Here was more evidence of the criminals’ cleverness. No one climbing the roof and seeing that wire leading out from it would suspect there was anything unusual about it. Van realized now that there was no telling where the extension might be. There were perhaps many hours of work ahead of him. But the trail was hot!

Already the eastern sky showed a dim glint of dawn. Van hurried down the stairs again, went into the candy store. There he stuffed a gag in Hog-face’s big mouth, tied it securely, and proceeded to bind the man hand and foot. Then he propped him up in a clothes closet, made sure there was ventilation, and locked the door. He could not have the man interfering with the dangerous work that lay ahead.

For Van was determined to trace down that extension. With dawn almost at hand he would have to prepare himself in a way that would arouse the least attention. People would see him. He must fix things so he could work unmolested right under their eyes.

Hurrying into the street he took a taxi to the laboratory of Dr. Paul Bendix. Here he made up as a boyish, freckle-faced young man. He slipped into a rather official looking but soiled suit of covert cloth. He stuck a visored cap on his head with a celluloid plate attached that said in large letters: “Licensed Radio Repairman.” It was a simple disguise that he had had occasion to use before.

He got out a kit of repairman’s tools and slung it across his shoulder. Other implements were in the bottom of the bag – a light, case-hardened steel jimmy for opening windows and an assortment of steel lock-picks and skeleton keys. Also a collapsible telephone receiver in case he saw fit to cut in on the extension wire.

He rode back to the neighborhood of the candy store, went around the block, and entered the other building on top of which he had made sure the extension wire disguised as an aerial was fastened. He climbed four stairways and went out on a roof again.

But here was another disappointment. The wire was attached to a pole, yet it did not end on this house either. It led to the under side of the coping, then continued as far as Van could see down the whole row of houses along the block.

Patiently, cautiously, he went on tracing it, taking time out now and then to act the part of radio repairman. He examined glass insulators, appeared to repair aerials; but all the while he was following that elusive wire. He progressed slowly.

At the end of the block the wire cut back through the attic of a house and gave him serious trouble. The skylight was bolted on the inside. It was daylight now, and much argument and explanation were necessary before the landlady would let him in.

IT wasn’t until along in the middle of the afternoon, when he was six blocks away from the starting point, that Van neared the end of his quest. The neighborhood was much better here. Old houses had been reconditioned into swanky small apartments. There was an air of Bohemian glamour about the section. Brass knockers on the doors, colored tiles, brightly curtained windows. And the wire appeared to terminate in the roof of a big studio apartment in one of the most luxurious buildings on the block.