Robert Wallace - The Dancing Doll Murders

Van didn’t expect to call the detectives. He was on his own now, fighting the black menace of murder in his own peculiar way. Combating crime was the grim work to which he’d pledged his life. He was touched, too, by the fact that the murdered Squires had known of his reputation and asked for his help. The Phantom must keep faith with the dead!

All his artistry at disguise had gone into his impersonation of Simon Blackwell. A clever toupe held the hairs of a stiff, grey pompadour. Special facial moulage heightened the bridge of his nose and gave him a hawklike look. He had simulated the deathly pallor of the recluse’s skin. Besides this, Van’s muscular control, developed through long practice, made it possible for him to move and carry himself with the same tense energy that characterized Blackwell. Posture was as much a part of his disguises as make-up. He was Blackwell to all intents and purposes.

Even the witchlike old servant mistook him for her master. When she had questioned him on his return as to why the police had taken him to the city, Van had growled at her fiercely, in the manner of Blackwell:

“None of your business, Sarah! The stupid, blundering fools -”

He had ordered her to her room and had gone grumbling, cursing, and stamping to his own chamber.

But instead of undressing, he had taken off his shoes, turned out the lights, and begun prowling around the house in darkness when he was sure Sarah was asleep. The gusty snoring of the old woman left no room for doubt.

Van could see the flickering headlights of the dump trucks as they rattled along the road from the subway excavation. The night shift was at work. The trucks were kept busy a full twenty-four hours. One arrived at the point about every half hour, disgorging the sludge and blue clay that had been the dead man’s clue.

With this activity going on, with detectives watching, it didn’t seem possible that the killers would strike tonight. But Van’s sense of impending danger deepened with every passing minute. Dimly he felt that he was pitted against a ruthless, cunning brain that would not be swerved from its course by any obstacle.

He had no definite plan of action. He was alert for trouble, ready to take advantage of any opportunity that came to get better acquainted with the criminals. He wanted to probe the hidden well springs of murder, find out who was behind the dancing doll killings and what the motive was.

He went to the back of the house, looked out, and drew in a hissing breath. He was certain now that the killers planned a murderous follow-up to the sending of the doll to Simon Blackwell. For, as he crouched by a window of the dismal cottage, a shadow moved out on the river. He caught sight of it briefly when the headlight beam from a dump truck swung that way. Then darkness swallowed it again.

It was a small speedboat, near shore, wallowing lazily in the oily swells. He could make out no one on it, only a black hull low down on the water, the bow pointed, the stern coffin-shaped. He thought for a few minutes that the killers planned to land at the tip of the point. But the boat came no nearer. And suddenly Van rose and whirled toward the front of the cottage as the whining roar of a motor sounded.

He leaped to another window, crouched, peered out. The headlights bored straight at him, satanic eyes coming nearer and nearer in the darkness. Metal clattered. Huge tires jounced through frozen ruts. One of the big dump trucks seemed to have run amuck like a mad colossus, or the man driving it had gone berserk.

The truck came plunging on wildly, away from the filled-in ground, straight toward the barbed-wire fence that barred the road in front of the cottage.

Then Van heard cries and shots. Farragut’s men in the bushes, unable to resist the temptation to interfere, had ordered the truck to halt, and fired when it didn’t.

A dancing point of flame leaped from a spot near the top of the truck’s metal body. A machine-gun clattered, drowning out the lesser fire of the police automatics. The night broke into hideous pandemonium as death hurtled at the Phantom.

NO mistaking the meaning of that plunging truck. This was the way the killers had taken to gain entrance and batter down all barriers. They had slain or knocked out the lawful driver, stolen the truck.

Their machine-gun cut a swathe of destruction through the night. Van couldn’t see its effect. But he felt certain that some of Farragut’s men were being mowed down by that hail of bronze-jacketed lead. The crashing of the police positives seemed more intermittent now.

The truck came on to the barbed-wire gate. It appeared to crouch for a split second, a gleaming-eyed monster gathering itself for a fresh burst of speed. Then its bumper struck the frame of the gate. It plunged through splintering boards like matchwood, snapping barbed wire strands as though they were cotton threads. It wallowed on toward the house, its motor thundering.

Van watched, lynx-eyed, his fingers clawlike over the black butt of his automatic. A moment later he leaped back from the window and whirled. He felt the whole house shudder as the vehicle struck. Timbers snapped. Boards grated. The huge truck squalled to a stop.

Half the porch and a corner of the cottage had been ripped wide open. Night wind rushed in, chill with the presentiment of death. Van heard the killers calling to each other. There seemed to be several of them on board the truck, assassins worked up to a fever pitch of excitement, thirsting for human blood.

The machine-gun yammered again. Out in the darkness police automatics answered. Lead struck the body of the stalled truck, screaming away into the night like a frightened wraith fleeing a scene of murder.

Tiptoeing close to the broken corner of the building, Van heard one of the killers call out an order.

“Go in an’ get ‘im, Dopey! Rip ‘im wide open. We’ll hold off the lousy coppers.”

“Okay,” came the snarled answer. “Leave the old guy to me!”

A black figure detached itself from the truck. It slipped through the broken hole in the building, came on purposefully; and Van caught a brief glimpse of light reflected from a machine-gun’s ugly snout. He tiptoed back into Blackwell’s bedchamber, spoke in the harsh, querulous voice of the recluse.

“Who is it? What do you mean, you fools, smashing into my house?”

The gunman couldn’t see him. Van took a desperate chance in that instant. For a flashlight stabbed toward him, bathing his disguised face, and Van waited. He knew that two hands are needed to hold and fire a machine-gun. Then the light went out. There was a ripping, vicious burst from the rapid-firer. The gun clattered like a mad thing out in the hallway in the hands of the killer who had entered.

But Van had leaped far to the left of the doorway as soon as the light was extinguished. Bullets lashed empty space at the spot where he had been. He screamed now, the cry of a mortally wounded man, throwing his voice so that it seemed to come from straight in front of the gunman. Then he groaned realistically; snatched a quilt from the bed; flung it over a light, straight-backed chair; and, as the man came close, Van hurled the chair to the floor so that it fell with a convincing, muffled thud.

The killer stepped through the bedroom door, brought his gun into action again, and pumped bullets viciously into what he thought was Blackwell’s prostrate body. Then he flicked on his flash to make sure his work was done.

That was his last conscious act that night. Van got a brief glimpse of his savage face, flushed, with eyes that were unnaturally bright and glassy. A drug addict, pumped so full of the stuff that he was hardly human!