Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

Van, between shots, could actually imagine he heard the slap of the bullets against Bowers’s body. The big man pawed at his chest and stomach. His jaw dropped open as though in gaping surprise. All six shots seemed to have struck him. He thudded down on the tiles like a falling porpoise and lay hideously still.

Blackie pocketed his gun. His face was still working, but there was a thin, sadistic smile on his pale lips. The murder of Bowers seemed to give him grim satisfaction. Others of the gang came crowding into the room. Blackie walked up to Bowers’s still form, kicked it.

“Some of you heels take this carrion away!” he snarled.

WHEN they had dragged Bowers’s corpse out, Blackie turned suddenly to the man called Doc.

“Doc, I wanta see you! All the rest of you mugs scram and leave us alone!”

Doc, with his glittering glasses and satanic face, cringed back in terror. He seemed to think he was going to be murdered in cold blood, too. But Blackie gestured magnanimously.

“Not yet, Doc! You’re okay as long as you make good. Bowers had it comin’ to him. The big ox fell down on me. And” – Blackie lowered his voice, but Van could still hear him – “we don’t need Symie and that other hophead any more. They’re liabilities. Next time you give ‘em the needle, be generous.”

Doc smiled, relieved obviously that Guido’s murderous anger had spent itself on Bowers.

“I’ve got something that will do the trick more surely than a mere overdose of dope,” he said huskily. “A little arsenical compound of my own invention. I’ll mix it with the morphine. Those boys are as good as dead.”

“Fine! You’re an educated feller, Doc. You’ve got brains and you’ve had plenty experience. Now that Bowers is out I think I’ll make you my number one sidekick. We’ll get along swell as long as you do as I say.” Guido paused a moment, riveting his hard, black eyes on Doc’s face.

Doc grinned till his features became a leering death’s-head. “You’re the boss, Blackie. What I like to do is oblige.”

“Okay. Then I wanta talk to you about something. We’re in a tough spot – all of us. We don’t know who the Chief is. He knows us. If it hadn’t been for the big dough he offered I’d never have got my neck into this. But dough don’t do a guy any good in the hot seat. How do we know the Chief won’t double-cross us?”

“We don’t!” said Doc, still grinning.

“Well, it ain’t funny!” snapped Blackie. “We gotta find out more about him. We gotta get ready to put the brakes on.”

“How?” The grin had faded from Doc’s face. Guido had been thinking of that, too.

SOMETHING the Chief said put me wise! He was handing me a line. He made out our job is to bump all the people who’re gonna get a slice of the Caulder dough except Reggie Winstead. Then he said we could shake down Reggie. But that sounds phony to me. By the time all the others are six feet under Reggie will either skip out of the country or hire enough private detectives so an army couldn’t get to him.”

“Well,” said Doc, “maybe he was handing you a hot-air highball.”

“Yeah, maybe he was – and I figure he had a reason for doing it!” Guido’s eyes gleamed, and he smiled suddenly with a look of vicious cunning. He thrust his face close to Doc’s, spoke so that Van could barely hear him. “How do we know the Chief ain’t Reggie Winstead?”

Doc started, drew a hand slowly over his high, peaked forehead. Then his head bobbed.

“A good bet, Blackie! Brothers have killed each other before. Cain bumped Abel, didn’t he? You say Winstead seems like a fellow who’s afraid of his own shadow; but maybe that’s just an act. Maybe the Chief is Winstead. Maybe he plans to use you, get the other heirs killed off, get all the money himself, then see to it that you and all the rest of us land in the chair.”

Blackie Guido swore furiously, clamped his fingers on Doc’s arm.

“If that’s his game, he won’t get away with it! We’ll get some of the boys to watch Winstead and put the heat on him if they find anything suspicious. We’ll find out somehow whether Winstead’s the guy. And, meantime, before tomorrow night, we’ve got to see that Blackwell gets his. If we don’t, and if Winstead isn’t the Chief, we’ll all be through.”

“I don’t know the circumstances, of course,” Doc said softly, “but you say the Chief came to see you right here in this room, A simple way out of our difficulty occurs to me. Why not let the boys in when he comes the next time and fill him full of lead?”

“It wouldn’t work,” snapped Blackie. “I ain’t sayin’ why. There are some things that are none of your damned business. But the Chief let onto one thing on his first visit, he wears a bullet-proof vest that would just about stop shrapnel. He figured right off that I might try to doublecross him.”

Doc grinned again, that mirthless, satanic grin. “From what you say, Blackie, the gentleman has anticipated everything. I admit I’m over my depth; but I’m glad to take orders.”

“Get rid of those hopheads, then,” said Blackie sullenly. “I’ll send some of the boys out to find out what the cops have done with Blackwell. After I know just where he is I’ll figure out how to get him.”

Guido turned toward the locked door of the billiard room. Van left his hiding place behind the partition and stole quickly through the darkness of the chamber he was in. He reached the furnace room door, went out, and shut it carefully behind him. He spent about five minutes brushing the ground, obliterating tracks. Then he moved like a shadow across the lawn to the high brick wall. He drew himself up, oozed deftly over the signal wire, dropped to the street.

He had heard enough tonight to make his pulses drum with excitement. He had come close, tantalizingly close to the truth. He had actually seen the Chief, learned how Blackie Guido made contact with the ruthless, unknown killer. And yet the question mark in front of that sinister, helmeted figure was even larger now. Who was he?

Van was uncertain. A half dozen theories were beating through his mind. Inspector Farragut thought that Judd Moxley, up in prison, was the one. Blackie Guido had hit upon the startling idea that Reggie Winstead was the Chief. Farragut’s theory would be proved or disproved shortly. It might take time to get to the bottom of Blackie Guido’s.

Van had known desperate, scheming criminals to hide behind innocent appearing exteriors before. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Reggie Winstead was the guilty man. Then there was Eben Gray, the other Caulder nephew, tall, sardonic, almost as saturnine in appearance as the criminal, Doc. He had seemed the least frightened, the least disturbed of any. Farragut’s men were giving him protection. But they weren’t watching him all the time. He had been free to come and go.

The riddle grew deeper as Van thought about it, as strangely mystifying as any case he had ever been on. But right now there was something concrete to handle, something he must do. Death’s bony fingers were reaching for the recluse, Simon Blackwell. Van had saved the man’s life once. He must save it again.

RICHARD VAN LOAN waited outside the old house long enough to see Blackie Guido emerge, and to trail him back to the heart of the city.

He didn’t want to lose sight of this key man in the sinister crime mystery, Guido might become useful before the case was finished. Already the Phantom had evolved a desperate plan he would put into action if all else failed.

He found that Guido, after being driven from his luxurious studio apartment, had taken a furnished room about six blocks from the Hotel Chatterly where Dolly DeLong lived.