Robert Wallace: The Dancing Doll Murders

The publisher nodded quickly. “It’s even possible that when you ‘saved’ Blackwell out at Channel Point it wasn’t necessary. If Blackwell’s the killer the attack of those hopheads was only a sham. After the cunning the Chief’s shown I’m ready to believe anything. And we mustn’t forget that the clue of the clay that Squires brought here pointed straight at Blackwell. Maybe Farragut’s interpretation of it was right after all.”

Van only shrugged. He had a feeling suddenly that the answer to the whole hideous riddle was in sight – just around the corner if he could only reach it. He grabbed his hat.

“I’ll call you later. I’m going out to Caulder’s to see if I can help.”

SWIFT as he had moved, though, Van was too late. Disaster came quickly. Something fell at the feet of two detectives patrolling the Caulder lawn as Van’s taxi swung into the drive. The thing thudded down into a patch of dry leaves on the north side of the house in sight of the windows of the sick room. It made a sound like a hissing snake.

Van didn’t hear it above the taxis crunching tires. Not till he paid his fare and got out did he notice that flashlights were winking in the gloom.

He called a question. But the detectives were too preoccupied to answer. Van hurried toward them. As he got nearer he saw them standing tensely, peering into the surrounding darkness. Then suddenly that darkness was ripped apart by a terrific explosion. The whole night seemed to be split wide open. Red and orange flame mushroomed out. The air was filled abruptly with a deafening cacophony of sound, with acrid smoke and flying particles of dirt and metal.

The two detectives never knew what struck them. For the spitting thing that had landed at their feet was a bomb, a grenade, and it exploded so close that t heir bodies were literally torn to pieces. The lurid glow lighted up the whole side of the house. The night became a bloody horror. Van was hurled flat, knocked unconscious, his face streaked with mud and gore. And when the darkness settled again, the section of lawn which the two men had been guarding was left exposed.

Inside the house, in the big drawing room, Inspector Farragut dropped the dancing doll he’d been examining. Hell itself seemed to have broken loose outside. But Farragut had presence of mind enough to think instantly of the sick man upstairs. This explosion out on the lawn could mean only one thing – the way was being cleared for the attack on Caulder.

FARRAGUT left the drawing room, plunged across the big, old-fashioned entrance hall, and headed for the main flight of stairs. Before he reached the first landing another explosion sounded in the house itself, a detonation so terrific that the wind of it struck Farragut like a giant’s fist. The crash was in the hall directly above, near the door of Caulder’s bedroom.

It hurled Farragut back down the stairs. He went bouncing, sprawling to the very bottom, landing with his glasses broken and his body bruised. He lay for seconds too dazed to move. Then he picked himself up, grabbed his automatic. Face white, set, and bleeding from a cut made by his broken glasses, he started up the stairs again.

But the hall above was filled with choking vapor. Behind this foglike wall a shot suddenly sounded. Then Farragut heard a clatter of running feet at the other end of the upper hallway, and cursed fiercely, knowing there was a rear set of stairs.

The sound of the footsteps died away. Farragut, gripping his gun, thrust resolutely into that pall of smoke. But it confused him, blinded him, and he spent nearly three minutes opening the doors of empty rooms and batting against walls.

When the vapor began to clear a little he saw a reeling figure coming toward him. A man with a bloody face, staring eyes, and arms that waved frantically lurched down the hall. It was Caulder’s male nurse, his coat torn, a bruise on his cheek, a two-inch cut on his forehead pouring blood. His white lips opened and a creaking sound came from them. “Fire!”

Farragut smelled more smoke then, and saw suddenly that there was a wavering, lurid glow coming from the sick room door.

“There’s an extinguisher in the bathroom,” gasped the nurse. If I can get it -”

The man lurched on. Farragut ran toward that lighted doorway. It had been shattered by the second grenade. The panels were cracked and the door sagged on its hinges. Worse still, the bomb had set fire to Caulder’s bedclothes and to draperies in the room.

Flames were shooting up in a dozen places. Farragut lurched toward the bed where a figure lay, stepped back gasping as flames singed his eyebrows, then gathered up a blanket and began beating at them. One patch of flame had crept close to Caulder’s face. The inspector concentrated on this.

He was helped in a moment by the nurse who came back clutching a red fire extinguisher. The squirting chemical did the work better than Farragut’s blanket, which put the flames out in some places, but fanned them in others. In a moment the blaze in the bedclothes was out. They turned their attention to the draperies. Farragut snatched the extinguisher from the nurse’s hands.

“Look out for him,” he snapped, jerking his thumb toward Caulder. “See if he’s alive.”

The nurse, weakened from loss of blood, stumbled faithfully toward the bed. While Farragut put out the last of the flames, the nurse tipped back Caulder’s head and gave him a stimulant. Caulder’s grey hair was singed, his face blackened with smoke, but his heart was still beating. The nurse gave a cry of thankfulness, then collapsed on the floor with his bloody face lolling inertly beside his patient’s bed.

It was five minutes later, after Dick Van Loan had picked himself up painfully and entered the house, that the nurse recovered enough to talk.

His words came tremblingly.

“After the explosion outside,” he said, “I heard someone coming along the hall. I went to the door. It was a man, a stranger. He lifted his arm and threw something when he saw me. I ducked back and dropped flat in time to escape being blown to pieces by the second grenade.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” Van asked tensely.

‘Yes, He had a handkerchief over his face, but I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. I can see them yet. They burned right through me. He came up the servants’ staircase in the rear and escaped the same way. He thought the bomb he’d thrown had killed me, for he came right into Mr. Caulder’s room. I was too dazed to move for a minute. A piece of wood had struck me here in the forehead. Then I saw him deliberately touch a match to the bed and the draperies, and I remembered the gun Mr. Caulder had asked me to carry at the time these terrible murders first began. I drew it and shot the stranger. My hand was shaking so that I don’t think I hit him; but I scared him away.”

“Yes,” said Farragut. “He was running.” The inspector turned and gave an order to Sergeant Nelson. “Watch every door and window. Caulder’s still alive and that devil may have nerve enough to try coming back.”

The nurse shook his head. “If Mr. Caulder’s death was what he wanted, he won’t need to come back. This shock will finish Mr. Caulder.”

Dick Van Loan agreed. “To a man in his condition those two explosions and that fire should be as fatal as bullets.”

The family doctor came and confirmed the Phantom’s words. Caulder was very low, his heart feeble and irregular, the spark of life already flickering.

“He may go any time now,” said the doctor. “At most I would say he can’t last a week.”

Farragut spoke fiercely. “You hear that, Phantom! The murderer has succeeded, after all.”