fortune for ten years and then divide it among the heirs. It’s due to be handed to them some time this year. With Esmond Caulder on his deathbed they’re going to get it even quicker. And the will reads that the share of any heir who dies is to be divided among the others. You couldn’t have a much stronger motive for murder. If one heir can manage to bump off all the others he’ll get the entire fortune.”
“That means that Eben Gray, Reggie Winstead, or even Simon Blackwell might be guilty,” said Van. “We’ve seen how shrewd the murderer is. Supposing that business of Blackwell’s getting one of the dolls and being visited by the killers was just a stall? I’m not saying it was, but it might have been.”
“Yeah, it might have been – but the smartest thing of all would be for a guy in prison to engineer these killings. You couldn’t pinch a fellow for murder if he could prove that all the time the murders were being committed he was in jail. Judd Moxley is the one heir who’s got an air-tight alibi – unless I can prove he’s been skipping in and out of the cooler while the killings were going on.”
“I think I can help you on that,” said Van quickly. “I’m working on something right now. If it breaks right I hope to get a look at the king-pin murderer some time tonight. Suppose you have your man up at the pen keep his eye on Moxley every minute. If he stays in his cell, and if I get a look at the Chief tonight, we’ll know your theory is all wet and that Moxley isn’t guilty.”
Farragut agreed. “But how in hell, Phantom, are you going to make contact with this Chief?”
“That’s what I’m waiting to find out!” Van muttered.
The phone in the Tyler apartment rang ten minutes later, while a police photographer was taking pictures of Mrs. Tyler’s body and after the medical examiner had made out his report. A detective answered it.
“Huston of the
“I’ll take that call!” snapped Van, and he grabbed the phone out of the detective’s hand as though it were a life-and-death matter. “Rodney Post speaking. Go ahead, Huston!”
The voice of the little newshound on the
“Swell!” said Van. “You’re tops, Steve. Go ahead, I’m listening.”
Praise from the Phantom was sweet balm to Steve Huston. He began spouting facts about Dolly DeLong as though he were quoting from her life history.
“Born in Milwaukee. Twenty-eight years old. Real name Fanny Green. Married a guy in Chicago in nineteen thirty. He got bumped off by the cops sticking up a slop joint in Cicero. She could hoof and sing a little and had a nifty shape. She came to the big town and landed a job in the Club Eldorado. Sings a bunch of mammy songs that are swell tear-jerkers. On big nights she doubles with a fan dance.”
“Yes,” said Van. “And how about her friends?”
“I was coming to that. I got chummy with the phone girl at the Chatterly like you suggested. I slipped her a few drinks at the bar and sure oiled her tongue. This Dolly DeLong dame is a one-man woman. Right now, anyway, she has to be. She’s mixed up with a guy named Blackie Guido who’s plenty tough. He phoned her this evening. She’s having dinner with him in the Rainbow Room of the San Carlo right after she’s finished her first hoof number. She wears size three-and-a-half shoes, likes
Van cut him off. “Save the rest till I see you, Steve! You’ve told me all I want to know. I suggest that you call it a day, grab your best girl, and paint the town red – and, incidentally, charge all expenses to Rodney Post. You’ve earned it.”
CHAPTER XII
AT the Club Eldorado this was a big night. Unmindful that there were webs of murder whose sinister strands reached even to this place of garish gaiety, the city’s pleasure seekers were out in force. Every table was reserved.
The dance floor was packed with swaying couples. The jazz band had worked itself into a red-hot frenzy. Champagne was flowing freely. Waiters were perspiring to keep pace with orders.
The majestic doorman at the club entrance told Dick Van Loan, still in the disguise of Rodney Post, that only those who had made reservations could obtain tables. But money talks along New York’s bright-light district, near, as some wit put it, “Two-Times Square, the Double-cross Roads of the World.”
The five dollar bill Van slipped the doorman got him inside. The twenty dollar bill he gave the captain of waiters made a small table magically appear where none had been before. From this vantage point, after the couples had gone back to their seats, Van watched the club’s floor show. He heard Dolly DeLong sing her mammy songs, saw her do her fan dance. She changed from a sobbing, husky-voiced crooner into a flitting, white-skinned moth parading her beauty under the spotlight.
Van studied her face and noted her drooping lips, her lambent, blue-lidded eyes. Here was a glamour girl who might have held the interest of any playboy along Broadway, yet her heart’s fancy had been caught by a scheming criminal. Perhaps Dolly DeLong didn’t know what a dangerous man her companion, Blackie, was. Or perhaps, like other white moths, she felt the flame’s fascination.
Van shrugged, rising before her number ended. He had stored the image of her face away in his mind. He wouldn’t forget it. He left the club quickly, hurried to the lobby of the Hotel San Carlo. There he bought himself a paper, lighted a cigarette, and settled down to wait. Over the top of his paper he watched the revolving doors.
JUST twenty minutes later Dolly DeLong came through them, dressed in evening gown with an evening wrap now, her smoothly waved hair gleaming, silver slippers on her feet, A tall, dark man in a Chesterfield, derby, spats, and kid gloves was accompanying her.
Van knew instantly that he was looking at “Blackie,” the head contact man in the strange murder ring. The clue of the orchid and Steve Huston’s patient inquiries had borne their fruit. Blackie, who thought he’d removed all evidence when he left his studio hideout, was now directly under the watchful eyes of the Phantom.
He remained under surveillance for the next hour while he dined with Dolly DeLong. For Dick Van Loan got a table near them. Quietly he ate and relaxed after many sleepless hours, watching the man who got his orders straight from the Chief.
Van had seen many men of Blackie Guido’s type before. But never one who, in appearance anyway, came up more completely to all the worst underworld traditions.
GUIDO’S thin lips showed arrogance, cruelty. His handsome, swarthy face was an emotionless mask. His nose was predatory, the curved beak of a vulture. His eyes, polished, black, expressionless agates, spoke of a crafty brain. When he smiled it was with his white teeth only. His eyes remained unsmiling, calculating, critical, even when he looked at Dolly. Here, Van knew, was a dangerous criminal to whom murder would be mere routine. Here was a man who for money, would gladly deal in death.
Van had left his own small, powerful coupe parked near the hotel. He paid his check, rose, and sauntered out just before Blackie Guido and Dolly DeLong finished their meal. He got in his coupe and waited, slouched in the shadows, until Guido and the girl came out. He saw Guido put Dolly DeLong in one taxi, then take another himself and drive away in the opposite direction.
Van didn’t make the mistake of following too soon. He was an old hand and an expert at the difficult game of shadowing. He knew every maneuver, every trick. He had spotted the number of the taxi’s license and the cab’s color and shape. And his eyes were so far-sighted, so well trained in the observation of small details, that at times his range of vision seemed uncanny.
He started his own coupe, swung it around after Guido’s cab was three full blocks away. He watched the traffic lights with hawklike attention. In them lay the greatest threat of defeat while shadowing a man by auto. There was the danger always that the car ahead might speed across a light that was just going red.
Van might cross it, but that would arouse his quarry’s suspicions. It might also bring on the risk of a delaying
