The Bat · Part 20

Had the money been taken out of the house or had it not? In that mad rush for escape had the man hidden with Dale in the recess back of the mantel carried his booty with him, or left it behind? It was not in the Hidden Room, that was certain.

Yet she was so hopeless by that time that her first search was purely perfunctory.

During her progress about the room the Unknown’s eyes followed her, but so still had he sat, so amazing had been the discovery of the body, that no one any longer observed him. Now and then his head drooped forward as if actual weakness was almost overpowering him, but his eyes were keen and observant, and he was no longer taking the trouble to act—if he had been acting.

It was when Bailey finally opened the lid of a clothes hamper that they stumbled on their first clue.

“Nothing here but some clothes and books,” he said, glancing inside.

“Books?” said Miss Cornelia dubiously. “I left no books in that hamper.”

Bailey picked up one of the cheap paper novels and read its title aloud, with a wry smile.

“Little Rosebud’s Lover, Or The Cruel Revenge, by Laura Jean—”

“That’s mine!” said Lizzie promptly. “Oh, Miss Neily, I tell you this house is haunted. I left that book in my satchel along with Wedded But No Wife and now—”

“Where’s your satchel?” snapped Miss Cornelia, her eyes gleaming.

“Where’s my satchel?” mumbled Lizzie, staring about as best she could. “I don’t see it. If that wretch has stolen my satchel—!”

“Where did you leave it?”

“Up here. Right in this room. It was a new satchel too. I’ll have the law on him, that’s what I’ll do.”

“Isn’t that your satchel, Lizzie?” asked Miss Cornelia, indicating a battered bag in a dark corner of shadows above the window.

“Yes’m,” she admitted. But she did not dare approach very close to the recovered bag. It might bite her!

“Put it there on the hamper,” ordered Miss Cornelia.

“I’m scared to touch it!” moaned Lizzie. “It may have a bomb in it!”

She took up the bag between finger and thumb and, holding it with the care she would have bestowed upon a bottle of nitroglycerin, carried it over to the hamper and set it down. Then she backed away from it, ready to leap for the door at a moment’s warning.

Miss Cornelia started for the satchel. Then she remembered. She turned to Bailey.

“You open it,” she said graciously. “If the money’s there—you’re the one who ought to find it.”

Bailey gave her a look of gratitude. Then, smiling at Dale encouragingly, he crossed over to the satchel, Dale at his heels. Miss Cornelia watched him fumble at the catch of the bag—even Lizzie drew closer. For a moment even the Unknown was forgotten.

Bailey gave a triumphant cry.

“The money’s here!”

“Oh, thank God!” sobbed Dale.

It was an emotional moment. It seemed to have penetrated even through the haze enveloping the injured man in his chair. Slowly he got up, like a man who has been waiting for his moment, and now that it had come was in no hurry about it. With equal deliberation he drew the revolver and took a step forward. And at that instant a red glare appeared outside the open window and overhead could be heard the feet of the searchers, running.

“Fire!” screamed Lizzie, pointing to the window, even as Beresford’s voice from the roof rang out in a shout. “The garage is burning!”

They turned toward the door to escape, but a strange and menacing figure blocked their way.

It was the Unknown—no longer the bewildered stranger who had stumbled in through the living-room door—but a man with every faculty of mind and body alert and the light of a deadly purpose in his eyes. He covered the group with Miss Cornelia’s revolver.

“This door is locked and the key is in my pocket!” he said in a savage voice as the red light at the window grew yet more vivid and muffled cries and tramplings from overhead betokened universal confusion and alarm.

CHAPTER TWENTY “HE IS—THE BAT!”

Lizzie opened her mouth to scream. But for once she did not carry out her purpose.

“Not a sound out of you!” warned the Unknown brutally, almost jabbing the revolver into her ribs. He wheeled on Bailey.

“Close that satchel,” he commanded, “and put it back where you found it!”

Bailey’s fist closed. He took a step toward his captor.

“You—” he began in a furious voice. But the steely glint in the eyes of the Unknown was enough to give any man pause.

“Jack!” pleaded Dale. Bailey halted.

“Do what he tells you!” Miss Cornelia insisted, her voice shaking.

A brave man may be willing to fight with odds a hundred to one—but only a fool will rush on certain death. Reluctantly, dejectedly, Bailey obeyed—stuffed the money back in the satchel and replaced the latter in its corner of shadows near the window.

“It’s the Bat—it’s the Bat!” whispered Lizzie eerily, and, for once her gloomy prophecies seemed to be in a fair way of justification, for “Blow out that candle!” commanded the Unknown sternly, and, after a moment of hesitation on Miss Cornelia’s part, the room was again plunged in darkness except for the red glow at the window.

This finished Lizzie for the evening. She spoke from a dry throat.

“I’m going to scream!” she sobbed hysterically. “I can’t keep it back!”

But at last she had encountered someone who had no patience with her vagaries.

“Put that woman in the mantel-room and shut her up!” ordered the Unknown, the muzzle of his revolver emphasizing his words with a savage little movement.

Bailey took Lizzie under the arms and started to execute the order. But the sometime colleen from Kerry did not depart without one Parthian arrow.

“Don’t shove,” she said in tones of the greatest dignity as she stumbled into the Hidden Room. “I’m damn glad to go!”

The iron doors shut behind her. Bailey watched the Unknown intently. One moment of relaxed vigilance and—

But though the Unknown was unlocking the door with his left hand the revolver in his right hand was as steady as a rock. He seemed to listen for a moment at the crack of the door.

“Not a sound if you value your lives!” he warned again, he shepherded them away from the direction of the window with his revolver.

“In a moment or two,” he said in a hushed, taut voice, “a man will come into this room, either through the door or by that window—the man who started the fire to draw you out of this house.”

Bailey threw aside all pride in his concern for Dale’s safety.

“For God’s sake, don’t keep these women here!” he pleaded in low, tense tones.

The Unknown seemed to tower above him like a destroying angel.

“Keep them here where we can watch them!” he whispered with fierce impatience. “Don’t you understand? There’s a killer loose!”

And so for a moment they stood there, waiting for they knew not what. So swift had been the transition from joy to deadly terror, and now to suspense, that only Miss Cornelia’s agile brain seemed able to respond. And at first it did even that very slowly.

“I begin to understand,” she said in a low tone. “The man who struck you down and tied you in the garage—the man who killed Dick Fleming and stabbed that poor wretch in the closet—the man who locked us in downstairs and removed the money from that safe—the man who started that fire outside—is—”

“Sssh!” warned the Unknown imperatively as a sound from the direction of the window seemed to reach his ears. He ran quickly back to the corridor door and locked it.

“Stand back out of that light! The ladder!”

Miss Cornelia and Dale shrank back against the mantel. Bailey took up a post beside the window, the Unknown flattening himself against the wall beside him. There was a breathless pause.

The top of the extension ladder began to tremble. A black bulk stood clearly outlined against the diminishing red glow—the Bat, masked and sinister, on his last foray!

There was no sound as the killer stepped into the room. He waited for a second that seemed a year—still no sound. Then he turned cautiously toward the place where he had left the satchel—the beam of his flashlight picked it out.

In an instant the Unknown and Bailey were upon him. There was a short, ferocious struggle in the darkness—a gasp of laboring lungs—the thud of fighting bodies clenched in a death grapple.

“Get his gun!” muttered the Unknown hoarsely to Bailey as he tore the Bat’s lean hands away from his throat. “Got it?”

“Yes,” gasped Bailey. He jabbed the muzzle against a straining back. The Bat ceased to struggle. Bailey stepped a little away.

“I’ve still got you covered!” he said fiercely. The Bat made no sound.

“Hold out your hands, Bat, while I put on the bracelets,” commanded the Unknown in tones of terse triumph. He snapped the steel cuffs on the wrists of the murderous prowler. “Sometimes even the cleverest Bat comes through a window at night and is caught. Double murder—burglary—and arson! That’s a good night’s work even for you, Bat!”

He switched his flashlight on the Bat’s masked face. As he did so the house lights came on; the electric light company had at last remembered its duties. All blinked for an instant in the sudden illumination.

“Take off that handkerchief!” barked the Unknown, motioning at the black silk handkerchief that still hid the face of the Bat from recognition. Bailey stripped it from the haggard, desperate features with a quick movement—and stood appalled.

A simultaneous gasp went up from Dale and Miss Cornelia.

It was Anderson, the detective! And he was—the Bat!

“It’s Mr. Anderson!” stuttered Dale, aghast at the discovery.

The Unknown gloated over his captive.

“I’m Anderson,” he said. “This man has been impersonating me. You’re a good actor, Bat, for a fellow that’s such a bad actor!” he taunted. “How did you get the dope on this case? Did you tap the wires to headquarters?”

The Bat allowed himself a little sardonic smile.

“I’ll tell you that when I—” he began, then, suddenly, made his last bid for freedom. With one swift, desperate movement, in spite of his handcuffs, he jerked the real Anderson’s revolver from him by the barrel, then wheeling with lightning rapidity on Bailey, brought the butt of Anderson’s revolver down on his wrist. Bailey’s revolver fell to the floor with a clatter. The Bat swung toward the door. Again the tables were turned!

“Hands up, everybody!” he ordered, menacing the group with the stolen pistol. “Hands up—you!” as Miss Cornelia kept her hands at her sides.

It was the greatest moment of Miss Cornelia’s life. She smiled sweetly and came toward the Bat as if the pistol aimed at her heart were as innocuous as a toothbrush.

“Why?” she queried mildly. “I took the bullets out of that revolver two hours ago.”

The Bat flung the revolver toward her with a curse. The real Anderson instantly snatched up the gun that Bailey had dropped and covered the Bat.

“Don’t move!” he warned, “or I’ll fill you full of lead!” He smiled out of the corner of his mouth at Miss Cornelia who was primly picking up the revolver that the Bat had flung at her—her own revolver.

“You see—you never know what a woman will do,” he continued.

Miss Cornelia smiled. She broke open the revolver, five loaded shells fell from it to the floor. The Bat stared at her—then stared incredulously at the bullets.

“You see,” she said, “I, too, have a little imagination!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE QUITE A COLLECTION

An hour or so later in a living-room whose terrors had departed, Miss Cornelia, her niece, and Jack Bailey were gathered before a roaring fire. The local police had come and gone; the bodies of Courtleigh Fleming and his nephew had been removed to the mortuary; Beresford had returned to his home, though under summons as a material witness; the Bat, under heavy guard, had gone off under charge of the detective. As for Doctor Wells, he too was under arrest, and a broken man, though, considering the fact that Courtleigh Fleming had been throughout the prime mover in the conspiracy, he might escape with a comparatively light sentence. In a little while the newspapermen of all the great journals would be at the door—but for a moment the sorely tried group at Cedarcrest enjoyed a temporary respite and they made the best of it while they could.

The fire burned brightly and the lovers, hand in hand, sat before it. But Miss Cornelia, birdlike and brisk, sat upright on a chair near by and relived the greatest triumph of her life while she knitted with automatic precision.

“Knit two, purl two,” she would say, and then would wander once more back to the subject in hand. Out behind the flower garden the ruins of the garage and her beloved car were still smoldering; a cool night wind came through the broken windowpane where not so long before the bloody hand of the injured detective had intruded itself. On the door to the hall, still fastened as the Bat had left it, was the pathetic little creature with which the Bat had signed a job—for once, before he had completed it.

But calmly and dispassionately Miss Cornelia worked out the crossword puzzle of the evening and announced her results.

“It is all clear,” she said. “Of course the Doctor had the blue-print. And the Bat tried to get it from him. Then when the Doctor had stunned him and locked him in the billiard room, the Bat still had the key and unlocked his own handcuffs. After that he had only to get out of a window and shut us in here.”

And again:

“He had probably trailed the real detective all the way from town and attacked him where Mr. Beresford found the watch.”

Once, too, she harkened back to the anonymous letters—

“It must have been a blow to the Doctor and Courtleigh Fleming when they found me settled in the house!” She smiled grimly. “And when their letters failed to dislodge me.”

But it was the Bat who held her interest; his daring assumption of the detective’s identity, his searching of the house ostensibly for their safety but in reality for the treasure, and that one moment of irresolution when he did not shoot the Doctor at the top of the ladder. And thereafter lost his chance—

It somehow weakened her terrified admiration for him, but she had nothing but acclaim for the escape he had made from the Hidden Room itself.

“That took brains,” she said. “Cold, hard brains. To dash out of that room and down the stairs, pull off his mask and pick up a candle, and then to come calmly back to the trunk room again and accuse the Doctor—that took real ability. But I dread to think what would have happened when he asked us all to go out and leave him alone with the real Anderson!”

It was after two o’clock when she finally sent the young people off to get some needed sleep but she herself was still bright-eyed and wide-awake.

When Lizzie came at last to coax and scold her into bed, she was sitting happily at the table surrounded by divers small articles which she was handling with an almost childlike zest. A clipping about the Bat from the evening newspaper; a piece of paper on which was a well-defined fingerprint; a revolver and a heap of five shells; a small very dead bat; the anonymous warnings, including the stone in which the last one had been wrapped; a battered and broken watch, somehow left behind; a dried and broken dinner roll; and the box of sedative powders brought by Doctor Wells.

Lizzie came over to the table and surveyed her grimly.

“You see, Lizzie, it’s quite a collection. I’m going to take them and—”

But Lizzie bent over the table and picked up the box of powders.

“No, ma’am,” she said with extreme finality. “You are not. You are going to take these and go to bed.”

And Miss Cornelia did.