“He may know who did it. Do you?”
Billy still shook his head.
Bailey remained unconvinced.
“Who did you see at the head of the small staircase?” he queried imperatively. “Now we’re through with nonsense; I want the truth!”
Billy shivered.
“See face – that’s all,” he brought out at last.
“Whose face?”
Again it was evident that Billy knew or thought he knew more than he was willing to tell.
“Don’t know,” he said with obvious untruth, looking down at the floor.
“Never mind, Billy,” cut in Miss Cornelia. To her mind questioning Billy was wasting time. She looked at the Unknown.
“Solve the mystery of this man and we may get at the facts,” she said in accents of conviction.
As Bailey turned toward her questioningly, Billy attempted to steal silently out of the door, apparently preferring any fears that might lurk in the darkness of the corridor to a further grilling on the subject of whom or what he had seen on the alcove stairs. But Bailey caught the movement out of the tail of his eye.
“You stay here,” he commanded. Billy stood frozen. Beresford raised the candle so that it cast its light full in the Unknown’s face.
“This chap claims to have lost his memory,” he said dubiously. “I suppose a blow on the head might do that, I don’t know.”
“I wish somebody would knock me on the head! I’d like to forget a few things!” moaned Lizzie, but the interruption went unregarded.
“Don’t you even know your name?” queried Miss Cornelia of the Unknown.
The Unknown shook his head with a slow, laborious gesture.
“Not – yet.”
“Or where you came from?”
Once more the battered head made its movement of negation.
“Do you remember how you got in this house?” The Unknown made an effort.
“Yes – I – remember – that – all – right” he said, apparently undergoing an enormous strain in order to make himself speak at all. He put his hand to his head.
“My – head – aches – to – beat – the – band,” he continued slowly.
Miss Cornelia was at a loss. If this were acting, it was at least fine acting.
“How did you happen to come to this house?” she persisted, her voice unconsciously tuning itself to the slow, laborious speech of the Unknown.
“Saw – the – lights.”
Bailey broke in with a question.
“Where were you when you saw the lights?”
The Unknown wet his lips with his tongue, painfully.
“I – broke – out – of – the – garage,” he said at length. This was unexpected. A general movement of interest ran over the group.
“How did you get there?” Beresford took his turn as questioner.
The Unknown shook his head, so slowly and deliberately that Miss Cornelia’s fingers itched to shake him in spite of his injuries.
“I – don’t – know.”
“Have you been robbed?” queried Bailey with keen suspicion.
The Unknown mumbled something unintelligible. Then he seemed to get command of his tongue again.
“Everything gone – out of – my pockets,” he said.
“Including your watch?” pursued Bailey, remembering the watch that Beresford had found in the grounds.
The Unknown would neither affirm nor deny.
“If – I – had – a – watch – it’s gone,” he said with maddening deliberation. “All my – papers – are gone.
Miss Cornelia pounced upon this last statement like a cat upon a mouse.
“How do you know you had papers?” she asked sharply.
For the first time the faintest flicker of a smile seemed to appear for a moment on the Unknown’s features. Then it vanished as abruptly as it had come.
“Most men – carry papers – don’t they?” he asked, staring blindly in front of him. “I’m dazed – but – my mind’s – all – right. If you – ask me – I – think – I’m – d-damned funny!”
He gave the ghost of a chuckle. Bailey and Beresford exchanged glances.
“Did you ring the house phone?” insisted Miss Cornelia.
The Unknown nodded.
“Yes.”
Miss Cornelia and Bailey gave each other a look of wonderment.
“I – leaned against – the button – in the garage – ” he went on. “Then – I think – maybe I – fainted. That’s – not clear.”
His eyelids drooped. He seemed about to faint again.
Dale rose, and came over to him, with a sympathetic movement of her hand.
“You don’t remember how you were hurt?” she asked gently.
The Unknown stared ahead of him, his eyes filming, as if he were trying to puzzle it out.
“No,” he said at last. “The first thing I remember – I was in the garage – tied.” He moved his lips. “I was – gagged – too – that’s – what’s the matter – with my tongue – now – Then – I got myself – free – and – got out – of a window – “
Miss Cornelia made a movement to question him further. Beresford stopped her with his hand uplifted.
“Just a moment, Miss Van Gorder. Anderson ought to know of this.”
He started for the door without perceiving the flash of keen intelligence and alertness that had lit the Unknown’s countenance for an instant, as once before, at the mention of the detective’s name. But just as he reached the door the detective entered.
He halted for a moment, staring at the strange figure of the Unknown.
“A new element in our mystery, Mr. Anderson,” said Miss Cornelia, remembering that the detective might not have heard of the mysterious stranger before – as he had been locked in the billiard room when the latter had made his queer entrance.
The detective and the Unknown gazed at each other for a moment – the Unknown with his old expression of vacant stupidity.
“Quite dazed, poor fellow,” Miss Cornelia went on. Beresford added other words of explanation.
“He doesn’t remember what happened to him. Curious, isn’t it?”
The detective still seemed puzzled.
“How did he get into the house?”
“He came through the terrace door some time ago,” answered Miss Cornelia. “Just before we were locked in.”
Her answer seemed to solve the problem to Anderson’s satisfaction.
“Doesn’t remember anything, eh?” he said dryly. He crossed over to the mysterious stranger and put his hand under the Unknown’s chin, jerking his head up roughly.
“Look up here!” he commanded.
The Unknown stared at him for an instant with blank, vacuous eyes. Then his head dropped back upon his breast again.
“Look up, you – ” muttered the detective, jerking his head again. “This losing your memory stuff doesn’t go down with me!” His eyes bored into the Unknown’s.
“It doesn’t – go down – very well – with me – either,” said the Unknown weakly, making no movement of protest against Anderson’s rough handling.
“Did you ever see me before?” demanded the latter. Beresford held the candle closer so that he might watch the Unknown’s face for any involuntary movement of betrayal.
But the Unknown made no such movement. He gazed at Anderson, apparently with the greatest bewilderment, then his eyes cleared, he seemed to be about to remember who the detective was.
“You’re – the – Doctor – I – saw – downstairs – aren’t you?” he said innocently. The detective set his jaw. He started off on a new tack.
“Does this belong to you?” he said suddenly, plucking from his pocket the battered gold watch that Beresford had found and waving it before the Unknown’s blank face.
The Unknown stared at it a moment, as a child might stare at a new toy, with no gleam of recognition. Then –
“Maybe,” he admitted. “I – don’t – know.” His voice trailed off. He fell back against Bailey’s arm.
Miss Cornelia gave a little shiver. The third degree in reality was less pleasant to watch than it had been to read about in the pages of her favorite detective stories.
“He’s evidently been attacked,” she said, turning to Anderson. “He claims to have recovered consciousness in the garage, where he was tied hand and foot!”
“He does, eh?” said the detective heavily. He glared at the Unknown. “If you’ll give me five minutes alone with him, I’ll get the truth out of him!” he promised.
A look of swift alarm swept over the Unknown’s face at the words, unperceived by any except Miss Cornelia. The others started obediently to yield to the detective’s behest and leave him alone with his prisoner. Miss Cornelia was the first to move toward the door. On her way, she turned.
“Do you believe that money is irrevocably gone?” she asked of Anderson.
The detective smiled.
“There’s no such word as ‘irrevocable’ in my vocabulary,” he answered. “But I believe it’s out of the house, if that’s what you mean.”
Miss Cornelia still hesitated, on the verge of departure.
“Suppose I tell you that there are certain facts that you have overlooked?” she said slowly.
“Still on the trail!” muttered the detective sardonically. He did not even glance at her. He seemed only anxious that the other members of the group would get out of his way for once and leave him a clear field for his work.
“I was right about the Doctor, wasn’t I?” she insisted.
“Just fifty per cent right,” said Anderson crushingly. “And the Doctor didn’t turn that trick alone. Now – ” he went on with weary patience, “if you’ll all go out and close that door – “
Miss Cornelia, defeated, took a candle from Bailey and stepped into the corridor. Her figure stiffened. She gave an audible gasp of dismayed surprise.
“Quick!” she cried, turning back to the others and gesturing toward the corridor. “A man just went through that skylight and out onto the roof!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MURDER ON MURDER
“Our on the roof!”
“Come on, Beresford!”
“Hustle – you men! He may be armed!”
“Righto – coming!”
And following Miss Cornelia’s lead, Jack Bailey, Anderson, Beresford, and Billy dashed out into the corridor, leaving Dale and the frightened Lizzie alone with the Unknown.
“And I’d run if my legs would!” Lizzie despaired.
“Hush!” said Dale, her ears strained for sounds of conflict. Lizzie, creeping closer to her for comfort, stumbled over one of the Unknown’s feet and promptly set up a new wail.
“How do we know this fellow right here isn’t the Bat?” she asked in a blood-chilling whisper, nearly stabbing the unfortunate Unknown in the eye with her thumb as she pointed at him. The Unknown was either too dazed or too crafty to make any answer. His silence confirmed Lizzie’s worst suspicions. She fairly hugged the floor and began to pray in a whisper.
Miss Cornelia re-entered cautiously with her candle, closing the door gently behind her as she came.
“What did you see?” gasped Dale.
Miss Cornelia smiled broadly.
“I didn’t see anything,” she admitted with the greatest calm. “I had to get that dratted detective out of the room before I assassinated him.”
“Nobody went through the skylight?” said Dale incredulously.
“They have now,” answered Miss Cornelia with obvious satisfaction. “The whole outfit of them.”
She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown. He was lying limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for him – and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet, like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her-false cry of alarm.
“Then why did you – ” began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt’s reasons for her trick.
“Because,” interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, “that money’s in this room. If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did he come back and hide there?”
Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.
“He got it out of the safe – and that’s as far as he did get with it,” she persisted inexorably. “There’s a HAT behind that safe, a man’s felt hat!”
So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he rebuffed her proffer of assistance!
“Oh, I wish he’d take his hat and-go home!” groaned Lizzie inattentive to all but her own fears.
Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her. She crossed behind the wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.
“A half-burned candle,” she mused. “Another thing the detective overlooked.”
She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the candle to the Hidden Room and back again.
“Oh, my God – another one!” shrieked Lizzie as the dark shape of a man appeared suddenly outside the window, as if materialized from the air.
Miss Cornelia snatched up her revolver from the top of the hamper.
“Don’t shoot – it’s Jack!” came a warning cry from Dale as she recognized the figure of her lover.
Miss Cornelia laid her revolver down on the hamper again. The vacant eyes of the Unknown caught the movement.
Bailey swung in through the window, panting a little from his exertions.
“The man Lizzie saw drop from the skylight undoubtedly got to the roof from this window,” he said. “It’s quite easy.”
“But not with one hand,” said Miss Cornelia, with her gaze now directed at the row of tall closets around the walls of the room. When that detective comes back I may have a surprise party for him,” she muttered, with a gleam of hope in her eye.
Dale explained the situation to Jack.
“Aunt Cornelia thinks the money’s still here.”
Miss Cornelia snorted.
“I know it’s here.” She started to open the closets, one after the other, beginning at the left. Bailey saw what she was doing and began to help her.
Not so Lizzie. She sat on the floor in a heap, her eyes riveted on the Unknown, who in his turn was gazing at Miss Cornelia’s revolver on the hamper with the intent stare of a baby or an idiot fascinated by a glittering piece of glass.
Dale noticed the curious tableau.
“Lizzie – what are you looking at?” she said with a nervous shake in her voice.
“What’s he looking at?” asked Lizzie sepulchrally, pointing at the Unknown. Her pointed forefinger drew his eyes away from the revolver; he sank back into his former apathy, listless, drooping.
Miss Cornelia rattled the knob of a high closet by the other wall.
“This one is locked – and the key’s gone,” she announced. A new flicker of interest grew in the eyes of the Unknown. Lizzie glanced away from him, terrified.
“If there’s anything locked up in that closet,” she whimpered, “you’d better let it stay! There’s enough running loose in this house as it is!”
Unfortunately for her, her whimper drew Miss Cornelia’s attention upon her.
“Lizzie, did you ever take that key?” the latter queried sternly.
“No’m,” said Lizzie, too scared to dissimulate if she had wished. She wagged her head violently a dozen times, like a china figure on a mantelpiece.
Miss Cornelia pondered.
“It may be locked from the inside; I’ll soon find out.” She took a wire hairpin from her hair and pushed it through the keyhole. But there was no key on the other side; the hairpin went through without obstruction. Repeated efforts to jerk the door open failed. And finally Miss Cornelia bethought herself of a key from the other closet doors.
Dale and Lizzie on one side – Bailey on the other – collected the keys of the other closets from their locks while Miss Cornelia stared at the one whose doors were closed as if she would force its secret from it with her eyes. The Unknown had been so quiet during the last few minutes, that, unconsciously, the others had ceased to pay much attention to him, except the casual attention one devotes to a piece of furniture. Even Lizzie’s eyes were now fixed on the locked closet. And the Unknown himself was the first to notice this.
At once his expression altered to one of cunning – cautiously, with infinite patience, he began to inch his chair over toward the wicker clothes hamper. The noise of the others, moving about the room, drowned out what little he made in moving his chair.
At last he was within reach of the revolver. His hand shot out in one swift sinuous thrust – clutched the weapon – withdrew. He then concealed the revolver among his tattered garments as best he could and, cautiously as before, inched his chair back again to its original position. When the others noticed him again, the mask of lifelessness was back on his face and one could have sworn he had not changed his position by the breadth of an inch.
“There – that unlocked it!” cried Miss Cornelia triumphantly at last, as the key to one of the other closet doors slid smoothly into the lock and she heard the click that meant victory.
She was about to throw open the closet door. But Bailey motioned her back.
“I’d keep back a little,” he cautioned. “You don’t know what may be inside.”
“Mercy sakes, who wants to know?” shivered Lizzie. Dale and Miss Cornelia, too, stepped aside involuntarily as Bailey took the candle and prepared, with a good deal of caution, to open the closet door.
The door swung open at last. He could look in. He did so – and stared appalled at what he saw, while goose flesh crawled on his spine and the hairs of his head stood up.
After a moment he closed the door of the closet and turned back, white-faced, to the others.
“What is it?” said Dale aghast. “What did you see?”
Bailey found himself unable to answer for a moment. Then he pulled himself together. He turned to Miss Van Gorder.
“Miss Cornelia, I think we have found the ghost the Jap butler saw,” he said slowly. “How are your nerves?”
Miss Cornelia extended a hand that did not tremble.
“Give me the candle.”
He did so. She went to the closet and opened the door.
Whatever faults Miss Cornelia may have had, lack of courage was not one of them – or the ability to withstand a stunning mental shock. Had it been otherwise she might well have crumpled to the floor, as if struck down by an invisible hammer, the moment the closet door swung open before her.
Huddled on the floor of the closet was the body of a man. So crudely had he been crammed into this hiding-place that he lay twisted and bent. And as if to add to the horror of the moment one arm, released from its confinement, now slipped and slid out into the floor of the room.
Miss Cornelia’s voice sounded strange to her own ears when finally she spoke.
“But who is it?”
“It is – or was – Courtleigh Fleming,” said Bailey dully.
“But how can it be? Mr. Fleming died two weeks ago. I – “
“He died in this house sometime tonight. The body is still warm.”
“But who killed him? The Bat?”
“Isn’t it likely that the Doctor did it? The man who has been his accomplice all along? Who probably bought a cadaver out West and buried it with honors here not long ago?”
He spoke without bitterness. Whatever resentment he might have felt died in that awful presence.
“He got into the house early tonight,” he said, “probably with the Doctor’s connivance. That wrist watch there is probably the luminous eye Lizzie thought she saw.
But Miss Cornelia’s face was still thoughtful, and he went on:
“Isn’t it clear, Miss Van Gorder?” he queried, with a smile. “The Doctor and old Mr. Fleming formed a conspiracy – both needed money – lots of it. Fleming was to rob the bank and hide the money here. Wells’s part was to issue a false death certificate in the West, and bury a substitute body, secured God knows how. It was easy; it kept the name of the president of the Union Bank free from suspicion – and it put the blame on me.”
He paused, thinking it out.
“Only they slipped up in one place. Dick Fleming leased the house to you and they couldn’t get it back.”
“Then you are sure,” said Miss Cornelia quickly, “that tonight Courtleigh Fleming broke in, with the Doctor’s assistance – and that he killed Dick, his own nephew, from the staircase?”
“Aren’t you?” asked Bailey surprised. The more he thought of it the less clearly could he visualize it any other way.
Miss Cornelia shook her head decidedly.
“No.”
Bailey thought her merely obstinate – unwilling to give up, for pride’s sake, her own pet theory of the activities of the Bat.
“Wells tried to get out of the house tonight with that blue-print. Why? Because he knew the moment we got it, we’d come up here – and Fleming was here.”
“Perfectly true,” nodded Miss Cornelia. “And then?”
“Old Fleming killed Dick and Wells killed Fleming,” said Bailey succinctly. “You can’t get away from it!”
But Miss Cornelia still shook her head. The explanation was too mechanical. It laid too little emphasis on the characters of those most concerned.
“No,” she said. “No. The Doctor isn’t a murderer. He’s as puzzled as we are about some things. He and Courtleigh Fleming were working together – but remember this – Doctor Wells was locked in the living-room with us. He’d been trying to get up the stairs all evening and failed every time.”
But Bailey was as convinced of the truth of his theory as she of hers.
“He was here ten minutes ago – locked in this room,” he said with a glance at the ladder up which the doctor had ascended.
“I’ll grant you that,” said Miss Cornelia. “But – ” She thought back swiftly. “But at the same time an Unknown Masked Man was locked in that mantel-room with Dale. The Doctor put out the candle when you opened that Hidden Room. Why? Because he thought Courtleigh Fleming was hiding there!” Now the missing pieces of her puzzle were falling into their places with a vengeance. “But at this moment,” she continued, “the Doctor believes that Fleming has made his escape! No – we haven’t solved the mystery yet. There’s another element – an unknown element,” her eyes rested for a moment upon the Unknown, “and that element is – the Bat!”
She paused, impressively. The others stared at her – no longer able to deny the sinister plausibility of her theory. But this new tangling of the mystery, just when the black threads seemed raveled out at last, was almost too much for Dale.
“Oh, call the detective!” she stammered, on the verge of hysterical tears. “Let’s get through with this thing! I can’t bear any more!”
But Miss Cornelia did not even hear her. Her mind, strung now to concert pitch, had harked back to the point it had reached some time ago, and which all the recent distractions had momentarily obliterated.
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.