“But how?” said Farragut. “He could never have got it. If he’d pulled through his illness we’d all have suspected him.”
“He didn’t intend to pull through,” said Van grimly. “At least not publicly. That was the beauty of it – the diabolical cleverness of his plan. He was ‘dying,’ almost ready to slip into a ‘coma.’ But haven’t you noticed, Inspector, that Caulder and Moxley look very much alike? So much that a little plastic surgery would make them identical. No, Caulder didn’t intend to pull through so far as the world went. He was willing to lose his own identity for the sake of a fortune. He planned to murder Moxley right here in this room tonight, leave Moxley in the bed here, and go back to prison himself as Moxley.”
VAN reached forward, ripped the bandages from Caulder’s twitching face.
“You see! It only needed a little facelifting! That nurse of Caulder’s is versatile as an assistant. If you search his room I think you’ll find a case of surgical instruments. And when it comes to throwing hand grenades he’s pretty efficient, too.”
“You mean that he -”
“Certainly. That attack on Caulder the other night was a home-made show. The nurse threw one grenade out of the window, killed two men on the lawn. The other he threw in the hall up here. He timed things exactly under Caulder’s direction. He even went so far as to smoke up Caulder’s face a little to make way for the bandages which would later cover the plastic surgery. He found time to run to the rear of the hall to make you think you heard the killer escaping. Then, heroically, he put out the fire. It was a masterly way of throwing dust in all our eyes, Inspector.”
“I get it now, but how -”
“It had to be that,” said Van grimly. “I began to have my suspicions the other night. But you’ll understand when I say I could hardly believe it. I had to have some fact that would give strength to such a theory. And, speaking of dust, that’s where I found it. It was in the sample I took from Caulder’s closet.
“Squires had a right to act as he did and attach importance to that clay. He must have gone to Caulder’s closet to get some legal paper, and he saw the fresh clay on Caulder’s shoes. Get it? Fresh clay on the shoes of a man who’s supposedly been in bed for weeks, dying of heart trouble! Caulder had been sneaking out in the dead of night.
“He got the clay on his feet when he went to see Blackwell. That was his one slip really – that, and letting Squires see it. Poor Squires paid for his discovery with his life.”
Van gestured to the head of the bed. “Caulder has this house wired, of course, so that he could lie up here and listen to everything his heirs were saying about him. He must have heard Squires ask Steve Huston to get the Phantom. Then, under his direction, the nurse went out and phoned a special hurry call to Guido ordering Squire’s death.”
“But Blackwell -”
“As innocent as you, Inspector. I thought so all along. I was certain when he ran off and hid. A man of the Chief’s type wouldn’t have brought suspicion on himself by running. He was obviously playing too crafty a hand for that.”
“Why the dancing dolls, Phantom? Was it just to confuse us?”
“That, and to make the whole thing look like an outside job. Caulder had a lot of time to spend in bed, and he must have had fun modeling those features of his dear relatives. Didn’t you, Caulder? How you hated every one of them! And you thought you were being very theatrical, and at the same time throwing dust in our eyes! You did, Caulder – clay dust that finally betrayed you under a microscope!”
