Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

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 glory 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.