Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

SHE raised her eyes. They met Van’s challengingly. “I don’t like to be spied on. You’re no gentleman after all.” She drained her cocktail glass, rose, and swept out of the drawing room disdainfully.

Van shrugged. Her arrogance was stupid. But there were detectives stationed all over the house. It was up to Farragut’s men to watch over her, too. He turned to question the maid, and at that instant Mrs. Tyler’s voice sounded down the hall, raised in complaint.

“No, I won’t have it! I want to be alone!”

Van jumped up. He saw an embarrassed detective step out of the kitchen door, and gesture helplessly. “She says she wants to mix another cocktail and that I’m in her way.”

Van was puzzled. Why did Mrs. Tyler seem determined to jeopardize her life? Had some emotion stronger than fear made her forgetful that she was in danger every moment she was alone?

Farragut came and called to his man. “Where’s Mrs. Tyler?”

The detective shrugged. “Right there in the kitchen. She’s mixing a drink and told me to get out. Says she can’t move without tripping over my big feet.”

“Never mind what she told you Stay in there with her.”

“Yes, sir.” The detective started back to his post, and Mrs. Tyler, inside the kitchen, slammed the door.

Dick Van Loan leaped forward. He pushed the detective aside, pounded on the door. “Don’t be a fool, Mrs. Tyler! We’ve all of us warned you! Every second you’re alone you’re risking your life!”

A contemptuous laugh was the only response the woman made.

Van listened. He couldn’t hear the rattle of ice in the cocktail shaker or a gurgle of liquor. There was no sound for several minutes, then Mrs. Tyler moved stealthily across the room and raised a window. They could hear the sash weights whisper.

“Great Scott!” snapped Farragut. “What’s she doing? Is she mad? Has she lost her sense?”

As though the night itself were giving answer, there was a sudden harsh and horrible scream. It was muffled, choking, hideous, an animal cry of primitive terror. It was cut off by a knifeblade of silence – a silence more terrible in its portent even than that weird cry. And then they heard a peculiar drumming noise as of human feet beating an unearthly tattoo against the floor.

OPEN up! Good God – what’s happened?” Inspector Farragut was twisting at the knob with shaking fingers.

But Dick Van Loan said nothing. White-faced, he drew back and launched his body straight at that locked door. It was heavy, massive. All the doors in this luxurious apartment were made of hand-finished oak.

It withstood the first lunge of his hard, well-muscled body. He drew back, lunged again. The door groaned this time, but the lock and the hand-wrought hinges held. And all the time, coming faintly to Van’s ears like a hideous, far-off funereal drumming was the clatter of Mrs. Tyler’s feet.

The sound stopped suddenly, and a vacuum of silence lay like a shroud behind that stubborn door.

Panting, Van ran for a chair, returned with it, and smashed at the panels savagely. He broke through one, reached in with a trembling hand, and snapped back the lock. Farragut was beside him, whitefaced, as he bolted through. And a cry came from the inspector’s lips.

“Good God – she’s gone!”

It was true. Mrs. Tyler, willful society beauty, was nowhere in the kitchen. But the window was open, and the night air that came through it carried a warning of death.

Van was the first to reach it. He thrust his head out. There was a courtyard outside the kitchen, its bottom ten stories down the clifflike face of the big apartment building. And, as he peered below into the shadows, he saw a huddled shape.

He turned away, feeling sickened. “Come,”was all he said.

They plunged down the hall to the elevator, took it to the basement, and hurried outside.

Mrs. Tyler lay as she had fallen, her upturned face still coldly beautiful, but her skull fractured. She was stone dead. Van’s eyes dropped from her face. He tensed suddenly, knelt down beside her, and the inspector gasped in amazement. For there was a cord of black rawhide about her white throat, drawn tight, cutting into the flesh. A piece of it, nearly fifty feet long, lay in a snaky coil beside her. Van lifted his head.

“The roof!” he barked. “Send men up there. Some one dropped a noose over her neck, snared her when she leaned out the window. After she was unconscious he pulled her through, let go of the line, and she fell.”

The inspector shot a harsh question at Van before he turned to give orders to his men. “What in hell was she leaning out of the window for? I don’t understand it!”

For answer Van’s hand reached inside the dead woman’s dress for that mysterious note. He found the paper without delay, unfolded it, and ran his eyes over the paper’s contents.

MRS. TYLER’S death lure was a love letter from a man who signed himself “Henry” and who asked the society beauty to send him a line.

“I’m damned if I get it,” barked Farragut. “I don’t see what this has to do with murder.”

“No?” Van’s voice was sardonic. “It has everything to do with it, Inspector! It was because of this note that she locked herself in the kitchen. The stubborn fool!” He added that bitterly. “She played right into the killer’s hands. He must have known of her intrigue. He planned things with diabolical shrewdness this time. Why in Heaven’s name didn’t she show me the note when I asked her to?”

“What are you talking about, Phantom?”

“This note,” said Van. “I tell you it was murder bait – the lure used by the killer.”

“I still don’t get it! He asks her to write to him. Why the devil didn’t she? Why did she want to stick her head out the kitchen window?”

“When she did that she had already written to him!” Van said grimly. He stared upward into the darkness for a moment. Then, “Let’s go back upstairs, Inspector. I think I can show you something.”

Back in the kitchen again, Van went to the fateful window, reached out, and felt along the ledge, then beckoned Farragut to his side.

“Just as I thought,” he said, pointing to a small open box on the outside sill, and a string leading away from the window. “Apparently Henry has an apartment directly across the court. He and Mrs. Tyler exchanged notes via this pulley device.”

“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.”