Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

Van shoved his hands in his pockets. His face was troubled.

“I know it seems like a dirty hoax, Inspector. But I’ll do my best to make Caulder think I’m his cousin visiting him. If I can make it stick he’ll be satisfied. Meantime we’ve got to consider that a man’s life’s at stake. I swear I’ve definite grounds for believing that Moxley’s marked as the next victim.”

Farragut frowned. “Havens here says that Blackwell’s old housekeeper wants to see you. She’s hinted that she knows where Blackwell is and has a message from him. We all think Blackwell’s the Chief. Why not get a little tough with her and make her lead us to him?”

“She wouldn’t,” snapped Van. “Not even if you used third degree methods. I sized that woman up the night we were out there. She’s loyal to her boss. It’d take patience, argument, and a lot of time to find out what she knows. And time is one thing we can’t spare, Inspector. Moxley will be leaving prison in less than an hour. How about it? Do I impersonate him, or are you willing to have another murder on your hands?”

Farragut weakened under Van’s steady gaze. He respected the Phantom’s judgment too much to keep on blocking him. He shrugged at last.

“Okay, Phantom,” he grumbled, “but you’d better let me go along with you to explain things to the warden and to Moxley.”

Van agreed willingly. There was a big possibility that Moxley might not take to his plan. If persuasion were necessary Inspector Farragut could help in his official capacity as Homicide Squad head by making Moxley realize his danger.

They took Farragut’s own car, a trimly uniformed police chauffeur at the wheel, and raced through the night with siren blaring till they got outside the city limits. Farragut’s face still showed disapproval.

He spoke grumblingly again.

“I’m not reconciled yet. You’ll be running a hell of a risk. We don’t know how or when the Chief will strike.”

His words echoed Van’s own thoughts. He didn’t know either just how or when the Chief would strike. If he made a miscalculation this time it might easily result in his own murder. He felt sure the Chief would attack again tonight somehow, somewhere. He had an idea – They rode on in silence for many minutes. Then Van was jerked out of his grim reverie by the squalling of the police car’s brakes. They’d been tearing over the State highway at a sixty-mile-an-hour clip. Now something white showed up under the long beam of their headlights in the exact center of the road. So great was their momentum that the police chauffeur had all he could do to stop before they reached it.

But Van, eyes hawklike, already saw that that white thing was a human figure. A woman! She was wearing a light polo coat. She lay half across both lanes of concrete, her silk-clad legs in one of them, her shoulders, arms and hatless head in the other. It seemed that she must have fallen or been thrown from a speeding car.

The sedan came to a stop twenty feet from her, and the chauffeur tooled it off to the side of the road. They all leaped out, eyes intent on that prone figure. It was a lonely stretch of highway, with barren ground and scrub thickets on both sides. Was this, Van wondered, another victim of cold-blooded murder?

“A girl,” breathed Farragut. “Look at that figure and those legs!”

They couldn’t see her face. Her head was turned away and covered by streamers of dark, wind-blown hair. Farragut spoke again as they reached her.

“She’s tied up! Her ankles and wrists are wired. She looks – dead.”

Horror gnawed at the Phantom’s mind. The girl seemed young, attractive. In trying to prevent one murder it looked as though they’d stumbled on the victim of another. But his feelings changed a moment later, when he stooped and touched her. For his hands encountered warm, yielding flesh.

“Not dead,” he said. “Knocked out or wounded.”

Farragut caught hold of the girl, too, and they lifted her easily. The muscular tension of her lithe body told Van at once that she was conscious, aware of what they were doing. They got her face into the beam of the car’s headlights, and then Van gasped.

She was pale, drawn, her eyes filled with abject terror. Adhesive tape had been plastered over her lips. But Van knew instantly that he’d seen her before. She was the night club dancer, Dolly DeLong!

Farragut straightened and spoke beside him.

“I don’t get it! She seems okay. If anybody wanted her to get run over they should have made her wear something besides that white coat. You can see it a mile away. What do you make of it, Phantom?”

FOR answer, Van suddenly straightened and struck the inspector in the chest with the flat of his hand. Struck him so hard that Farragut went spinning back across the road and fell sprawling in the ditch. Van followed this seemingly mad movement by diving headlong himself. He shouted a hoarse warning to the police chauffeur.

“Run!”

But the man didn’t understand. Van’s lightning move was all that saved any of them. For the darkness a few feet away, just outside the glare of the police car’s headlights, broke into pinpoints of flame. The wicked chatter of three machine-guns sounded.

Van, landing in the ditch on his shoulder, with lead fanning the air above him, caught a glimpse of the police chauffeur moving like an automaton, reaching for his service automatic. But the gesture was mechanical, hardly more than a reflex action. The man had already been struck.

Horror filled Van as he saw the policeman’s face disintegrate before his eyes, saw his body double up as he pitched forward onto the concrete, spouting blood.

Van had had no possible time to prevent this cold-blooded murder of a fine young cop. He and Farragut were marked for death, too. The instant he’d recognized Dolly DeLong his quick brain had sensed the reason for her being there, the reason for that white coat, that tape across her mouth.

Bullets were probing for him again, kicking up a spray of frozen dirt beside the road. Van hurled himself forward, grabbing the inspector’s arm as he went past, dragging the inspector with him down the bank of the highway, pulling him through a white fence into a rocky gully. Quick flight at the moment was their only hope against that cyclone of flying lead.

There would be three bloody corpses instead of one if those machine-guns had their way. It was one of the most deadly ambushes the Phantom had ever run into.

Farragut recovered his breath from the blow the Phantom had struck him.

“They got Sheehan!” he gasped fiercely. “The dirty, lousy murderers!”

“It’s the Chief’s men,” Van said. “The ones who slipped through the drag-net. Somehow the Chief got to them, hired them to get us. They used Guido’s girl for bait. They knew we wouldn’t stop unless -”

There wasn’t time for more explanations. Van had delayed their murder, but hadn’t as yet prevented it. For slugs were raking the darkness, searching for them now. Van jerked out his own gun, fired back, and tried to circle along the side of the road toward the police car.

HE saw what the Chief’s motive was now. Somehow the Chief had guessed his move to impersonate Moxley. He had hired these men to prevent it at any cost. He wasn’t going to let the Phantom stop Moxley’s murder. Not only that, orders had been given for the Phantom and Inspector Farragut to be ruthlessly destroyed. Van knew it was a fight to the death now – a fight with the Chief’s three remaining men, while the Chief carried out his sinister plan.

And the killers hiding in darkness on the other side of the highway obviously didn’t intend to let Van and Farragut make a getaway in the parked police car even if they could reach it. One of the yammering machine-guns was turned on the police sedan suddenly. Van heard glass shatter, heard bullets strike against metal. The next instant the big headlights went out as the car’s wiring was chopped to pieces.