Robert Wallace: The Dancing Doll Murders

Farragut stared at the clay, and looked up challengingly.

“This stuff was never used for modeling,” Van continued, “It isn’t plastic enough for that. It’s a sample of earth that Squires found somewhere and was going to tell me about. He was carrying it around with him. He must have got it before the murder of Winstead. For some reason the circumstances under which he found it, or the clay itself, aroused his suspicions. We’ve got to find out more about it.”

“How?” said Farragut. “It might have come from anywhere in or outside the city limits.”

“You don’t generally find blue clay like this on the ground’s surface,” said Van. “It seems to me to have come from a ditch somewhere. Call up Mike Keogh. He’s a contractor who’s dug more holes around New York than any other man in the city. Get him here, and I think he’ll give us some valuable information.”

FARRAGUT sent a detective to phone Keogh. Van began firing questions.

“Any trace of the fellow who shot Squires?”

“No. My men searched this building from top to bottom. Nobody outside of Huston, Mr. Havens, and the dead man saw him. He made his getaway before we arrived.”

“What about those dolls? Have you got any dope on them?”

Farragut’s face grew grave. “I had a report from one of my boys just before you came. A German import goods store over on Eighth Avenue was burglarized ten days ago. Nothing was taken except a half dozen of those dolls.”

“Half a dozen!” Van gave a whistling exclamation. “Good Lord, Inspector!” The air of the room seemed heavy suddenly with the black threat of more impending murder.

Farragut nodded fiercely. “I know! That means a lot more people are going to get them and be knocked off. It means these are just the first two killings in a chain.”

Dick Van Loan paced restlessly across the office. “We must hunt for a motive,” he barked. “It’s easy to see why Squires was killed. This clue of his was dangerous to someone. But why was Don Winstead murdered? Does it mean that the other Caulder heirs are marked as victims, too?”

“Maybe,” said Farragut. “They’re a damned queer family if you ask me. Nobody knows what they may have been up to. With old Caulder getting ready to cash in, the nephews and the niece are going to be rich as Solomon. Money’s always dangerous.”

“You say they’re a queer family, Inspector. Just what do you mean by that?”

“The three I talked to acted funny. Winstead’s brother is a sort of society sap who looks like a third-rate gigolo. Mrs. Tyler, the niece, is as dizzy a dame as you’d want to see. Eben Gray is one of those nasty nice gents that I would not trust around the corner. Then there are two others.”

“Two others?” Van leaned forward, eyes snapping behind his mask.

“Yes. I haven’t seen ‘em yet, but I’ve got their pedigrees. One, Judd Moxley, is up in the state pen doing time on a second-degree murder rap. He’s been there ten years now. He killed a friend in a peevish fit. The other, Simon Blackwell, is a recluse. Lives somewhere out in the suburbs.”

“Interesting!” said Van. “We’ll have to act quickly if we want to smash this chain of murders. Have you got the home addresses of all these people?”

Steve Huston stepped forward before the inspector could answer.

“They were in the Clarion files,” he said, “on account of their being heirs to the Caulder dough. Here they are, Phantom.” He handed Van a slip of paper with five addresses on it. “If you want Moxley,” he added, “just stop in at the jail.”

Van looked at the slip. “They all have impressive addresses except this man Blackwell,” he said quickly. “He lives up near a city dump by the East River.”

Havens’s secretary stuck his head in and announced that a Mr. Keogh had arrived. The contractor entered solemnly, a small, stocky man with a shrewd, Irish face. He jumped when he saw the corpse on the floor and the masked figure of the Phantom.

“It was good of you to come,” said Van. “This is a murder investigation, Mr. Keogh. We want your professional opinion on a point that has come up.”

Keogh glanced uneasily from face to face. “I don’t know a damn thing about detective stuff,” he muttered.

“But you can tell us whether you have ever come across any clay like this in your work as contractor?”

The Irishman squinted, wrinkled his forehead, and poked with a thumb the size of a chisel at the clay Van held out.

“Sure. We see lots of that stuff in the big ditch we’re digging for the new Sixth Avenue subway.”

Farragut snorted. Van said quietly: “What do you do with the clay, Mr. Keogh, after your steam shovels strike it?”

“Get rid of it,” said Keogh promptly. “Dump it out in some land the city wants filled in.”

“Where’s that?”

“Up the East River at a place they call Channel Point.”

Steve Huston made a choking sound, and Van’s eyes flashed fire. Huston spoke up loudly, his small wiry body quivering with excitement.

“Cripes alive, man! Channel Point is where this guy Blackwell hangs out. When it comes to sleuthing, Phantom, you’ve got a nose like a weasel.”

“The East River dump is our next stop,” said Van grimly. “Come on, Inspector.” The piece of land known as Channel Point was a dreary stretch of marsh extending out into the sluggish current of the East River. Heavy dump trucks had pitted and rutted the single road that led to the end of it.

VAN, in the police sedan with inspector Farragut and a group of plainclothes men from the Homicide Squad, could see under the headlights streaks of the bluish clay from the subway excavation, which had shaken off the dump trucks. Narrow byroads branched off, right and left, to refuse heaps and to the swampland that was being filled in.

The one cottage at the end of the point, where Simon Blackwell – recluse and heir to the Caulder millions – lived, was as dismal as its setting.

It was a rambling, ugly structure of unpainted clapboards. A light showed in one window. The rest of the house was dark. And, giving a sinister, secretive air to the whole place, a high barbed-wire fence ran from shore to shore in front of the house, blocking the road abruptly. The gate was padlocked.

“Give ‘em the horn!” Farragut growled to the police chauffeur.

The sedan’s siren, sounding dismally in the murk, brought a witch-like old woman, with a face as wrinkled as a nut kernel to the gate.

“Who is it? What do you want?” she croaked.

“It’s the police,” said Farragut. “We want to see Mr. Blackwell.”

A dashlight limned his face.

“The police!” The old servant’s voice cracked. She raised her lantern, looked at Farragut fearfully. “I can’t let you in. Mr. Blackwell don’t let no one through this gate since a tramp came and killed his dog.”

“He’ll see us,” said Farragut. “There’s been a murder, Blackwell’s likely to get in a lot of trouble if you don’t let us in.” He turned back his coat, let the rays of the lantern fall on his gleaming gold badge.

The old woman took a key from her apron and opened the padlock with shaking hands. She hobbled ahead of them as the big car rolled along the swampy drive.

WHEN they climbed out and went into the house a voice sounded fiercely: “What’s the meaning of this, Sarah? How dare you let people in when you know my orders?”

A tall hawk-faced man with a wiry pompadour of stiff grey hair stood in the door of a connecting room. His skin had a corpselike pallor, as though it were never exposed to fresh air or sunlight. But his body radiated an almost-frenzied vigor.

“It’s the police,” wailed the old woman. “They said you’d get into trouble if I didn’t open the gate.”