Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

Then he shut off his meter, threw in his clutch, and kept his foot ready on the pedal. His shoulders bent forward over the wheel.

The door of the rooming house opened; and a man dressed in a Chesterfield, derby, spats, and gloves, came down the brownstone steps. It was Blackie Guido, his swarthy face washed out with worry, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. He was slapping his gloves nervously against his leg. Inner emotion, fear, uncertainty, made his usually handsome face look ugly.

The taxi nosed forward as Guido walked up the street. “Cab, sir? Cab?”

Guido saw it, gestured mechanically with his pigskin gloves. He stepped through the door that the taximan pushed open.

“Hotel Chatterly,” he spat. “Step on it!”

“What’s that again, Mac?” The taximan twisted his head back interrogatively as though to make sure of his orders. His tough-looking face was innocently blank.

Guido brought his own sinister, bloodshot eyes close to the open window in the glass partition that separated him from the driver Nervous fury writhed in his pale lips.

“Are you deaf?” he yelled. “I said Hotel Chatterly, damn you!”

Crack!

Guido never saw the small leather blackjack that struck him. The driver swung it so quickly, so dexterously, in a back-handed flip, that it was like a stage magician’s trick. It hit Guido’s temple. There was artistry, calculation in the blow. Guido slumped and lay like a fallen grain sack in the bottom of the cab.

The cab shot forward with its silent, inert passenger that no one looking in from the outside would be apt to see. But the taximan turned into an avenue with few traffic lights, then cut at an angle across the city, choosing the lesser used streets.

The coup had worked out too well for the Phantom to want to take any chances now. Behind his taximan’s disguise his eyes were gleaming. Making a prisoner of Blackie Guido was only the first step in the daring action he planned. The cab was his own, one that he kept always ready in a secret garage.

He drove it now to another garage in the rear of Dr. Paul Bendix’s laboratory. He climbed out, closed the garage doors carefully. Blackie Guido as yet hadn’t even begun to stir. But his pulse was strong and steady. The Phantom’s expert blow had only stunned him. Van lifted him easily, carried him through a short walled passage and into the laboratory itself.

Here, in a small, thick-walled anteroom, was a metal chair bolted to the floor. Van had installed it in case the need arose to interview and subdue unruly captives. He dropped Guido in it, clipped handcuffs over his slack wrists and through rings in the chair, fastened his ankles to the rungs. Then he poured some carbonate of ammonia on a piece of cotton and held it under Guido’s nostrils.

Guido began to twitch at the end of two minutes. His sagging mouth closed, his eyelids opened. He sat up suddenly, glaring at the Phantom with all the ferocity of a wild animal in a trap.

“All right, Guido,” said Van softly. “There are a few things I want to ask you while you’re my guest.”

“Go to Hell!” said Guido. Veins in his forehead stood out. His teeth showed in a tigerish snarl. “I’ll get you for this!”

“You’ll never have a chance. The electric chair’s waiting for you. Do you know who I am?”

For seconds their eyes clashed, Van’s calm ones looking into Guido’s black pupils with a steady, menacing stare. For all his rough disguise as a taximan, Van’s face seemed to acquire dignity and an almost uncanny power. The mottled, angry flush began to fade from Guido’s cheeks. Fear and pallor took its place. He licked his lips, and his voice came huskily.

“I guess you’re – the Phantom!”

“Right! And you’re finished, Guido – done! I know just what you’ve been up to. I’ve got a closed case against you. You’ve had a hand in three killings in the last two days. Any one of them would send you to the death house.” Blackie’s face went pallid.

Van let that sink in. Then he added: “What I want from you now is a little information.”

Hope gleamed in Guido’s eyes at that. “Yeah? S’posin’ I won’t give it?”

“That’s up to you. I’m going to hand you over to the police anyway, and they’ll send you up the river. Your only chance is to turn State’s evidence. I’m not premising anything for a rat like you. But if you squeal, tell everything you know, you might get off with a life sentence.”

Guido began to perspire. There was an air of cold finality in the way the Phantom spoke. Van went on and told in a casual voice about the old house with the swimming pool in it, and how the Chief appeared. Guido broke at that.

“Hell, what’s the use, Phantom! You’ve got the dope anyway. Don’t let ‘em send me to the chair, and I’ll turn State’s evidence like you say. The rats I got workin’ for me let me down, anyway.”

Van began firing questions, and in five minutes he got the information he wanted – the signals Guido used on the electric button behind the molding to let the Chief know all was clear, and the fact that the murder gang had not been able to find Simon Blackwell.

VAN listened as Guido spoke, not only to his words, but to the inflections of his voice. And his eyes were hawklike as he watched Guido’s every expression.

In a moment he held up his hand. “Okay, Guido! That’s enough for now. The rest you can tell in court. I’m going to leave you here for a while – and first I’m going to give you a cocktail.”

Guido’s eyes followed Van with sudden suspicion as Van went to a small cabinet and poured a brownish liquid from a bottle into a glass. Guido spoke hoarsely as Van came toward him.

“You – you ain’t gonna poison me, Phantom?”

“Not poison you, no. There’s just enough laudanum mixed with this brandy to put you to sleep for the next twelve hours. It’s healthier than the arsenic compounds you ordered Doc to feed those hopheads.” When Guido hesitated to swallow the drink which Van placed against his lips, Van said softly: “I can use the blackjack again if you prefer.”

Guido gulped the brown liquor with sweat streaming from his face.

Van left the room. When he returned in ten minutes Guido was sleeping like a baby.

Van had already removed his taximan’s makeup and laid the foundation for another. And now, with a strong mercury-vapor light turned on Guido’s face, Van commenced an impersonation which took all his skill. There must be no slip-up this time, no fatal flaw that would give him away, as there had been when he made up as Dopey O’Banion. Too much depended on success. What he was going to do tonight might save human lives, prevent other murders.

He worked slowly, painstakingly – and in twenty-five minutes Blackie Guido’s exact double was standing in that room.

UNDER cover of the darkness a score of New York’s finest detectives moved stealthily. Singly and in pairs they converged on that house of mystery behind the high brick wall. They were armed to the teeth. Blackjacks, tear gas, riot guns, automatics.

Farragut, head of the Homicide Squad, led them. They had orders from him as strict and detailed as those of a shock-brigade in some invading army. Yet their success tonight depended on one man – the Phantom.

Van had already preceded them. Using Guido’s keys he had slipped through the gate, approached the house, and quietly entered a ground floor door. He knew his way now, knew approximately how the rooms were arranged. After he was once inside he made no attempt to be stealthy.

A flashlight suddenly winked on and fell on his face. “Hello, Blackie.”

Under that light Van didn’t hesitate or wince. He was too sure of his impersonation, He wore Guido’s Chesterfield, Guido’s derby. There were spats on his feet and pigskin gloves in his hands.