“You’ve got to get him, boys—get him or bust!” said a tired police chief, pounding a heavy fist on a table. The detectives he bellowed the words at looked at the floor. They had done their best and failed. Failure meant “resignation” for the police chief, return to the hated work of pounding the pavements for them—they knew it, and, knowing it, could summon no gesture of bravado to answer their chief’s. Gunmen, thugs, hi-jackers, loft-robbers, murderers, they could get them all in time—but they

Miss Cornelis Van Gorder, indomitable spinster, last bearer of a name which had been great in New York when New York was a red-roofed Nieuw Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant a parvenu, sat propped up in bed in the green room of her newly rented country house reading the morning newspaper. Thus seen, with an old soft Paisley shawl tucked in about her thin shoulders and without the stately gray transformation that adorned her on less intimate occasions,—she looked much less formidable and more innoce

She knew who it was, of course. The Bat! No doubt of it. And yet—did the Bat ever threaten before he struck? She could not remember. But it didn’t matter. The Bat was unprecedented—unique. At any rate, Bat or no Bat, she must think out a course of action. The defection of cook and housemaid left her alone in the house with Lizzie and Billy—and Dale, of course, if Dale returned. Two old women, a young girl, and a Japanese butler to face the most dangerous criminal in America , she thought grimly.

The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight. When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns enskied, but a dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered fitfully. Miss Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the window of the dining room in its scurrying flight, and narrowly escaped oversetting her glass of water with a nervous start. The tension of waiting—waiting—for some vague menace whic

Miss Cornelia dropped her newspaper. Lizzie, frankly frightened, gave a little squeal and moved closer to her mistress. Only Billy remained impassive but even he looked sharply in the direction whence the sound had come. Miss Cornelia was the first of the others to recover her poise. “Stop that! It was the wind!” she said, a little irritably—the “Stop that!” addressed to Lizzie who seemed on the point of squealing again. “I think not wind,” said Billy. His very lack of perturbation added weight

“What’s that?” “Somebody smashed a windowpane!” “And threw in a stone!” “Wait a minute, I’ll—” The Doctor, all alert at once, ran into the alcove and jerked at the terrace door. “It’s bolted at the top, too,” called Miss Cornelia. He nodded, without wasting words on a reply, unbolted the door and dashed out into the darkness of the terrace. Miss Cornelia saw him run past the French windows and disappear into blackness. Meanwhile Dale, her listlessness vanished before the shock of the strange occ

All unconscious of the slur just cast upon her forty years of single-minded devotion to the Van Gorder family, Lizzie chose that particular moment to open the door and make a little bob at her mistress and the detective. “The gentleman’s room is ready,” she said meekly. In her mind she was already beseeching her patron saint that she would not have to show the gentleman to his room. Her ideas of detectives were entirely drawn from sensational magazines and her private opinion was that Anderson m

“It’s upstairs!” Dale took a step toward the alcove stairs. Brooks halted her. “Who’s in this house besides ourselves?” he queried. “Only the detective, Aunt Cornelia, Lizzie, and Billy.” “Billy’s the Jap?” “Yes.” Brooks paused an instant. “Does he belong to your aunt?” “No. He was Courtleigh Fleming’s butler.” Knock—knock—knock—knock the dull, methodical rapping on the ceiling of the living-room began again. “Courtleigh Fleming’s butler, eh?” muttered Brooks. He put down his candle and stole no

A key clicked in the terrace door—a voice swore muffledly at the rain. Dale lowered her revolver slowly. It was Richard Fleming—come to meet her here, instead of down by the drive. She had telephoned him on an impulse. But now, as she looked at him in the light of her single candle, she wondered if this rather dissipated, rather foppish young man about town, in his early thirties, could possibly understand and appreciate the motives that had driven her to seek his aid. Still, it was for Jack! Sh

“Somebody groaning!” gasped Miss Cornelia. “It’s horrible!” The detective stepped up and took the receiver from her. He listened anxiously for a moment. “I don’t hear anything,” he said. “ I heard it! I couldn’t imagine such a dreadful sound! I tell you—somebody in this house is in terrible distress.” “Where does this phone connect?” queried Anderson practically. Miss Cornelia made a hopeless little gesture. “Practically every room in this house!” The detective put the receiver to his ear again.

“We have had a very sad occurrence here, Doctor,” said Miss Cornelia gently. The Doctor braced himself. “Who?” “Richard Fleming.” “Richard Fleming? ” gasped the Doctor in tones of incredulous horror. “Shot and killed from that staircase,” said Miss Cornelia tonelessly. The detective demurred. “Shot and killed, anyhow,” he said in accents of significant omission. The Doctor knelt beside the huddle on the floor. He removed the fold of the raincoat that covered the face of the corpse and stared at

“The rest of it?” queried Dale with a show of bewilderment, silently thanking her stars that, for the moment at least, the incriminating fragment had passed out of her possession. Her reply seemed only to infuriate the detective. “Don’t tell me Fleming started to go out of this house with a blank scrap of paper in his hand,” he threatened. “He didn’t start to go out at all!” Dale rose. Was Anderson trying a chance shot in the dark—or had he stumbled upon some fresh evidence against her? She coul

As it chanced, she did not turn. The hall door opened—the head behind the settee sank down again. Jack Bailey entered, carrying a couple of logs of firewood. Dale moved toward him as soon as he had shut the door. “Oh, things have gone awfully wrong, haven’t they?” she said with a little break in her voice. He put his finger to his lips. “Be careful!” he whispered. He glanced about the room cautiously. “I don’t trust even the furniture in this house to-night!” he said. He took Dale hungrily in hi

Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie’s screams once more had called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had failed. She followed in mechanically, watched an irritated Anderson send the Pride of Kerry to bed and threaten to lock her up, and listened vaguely to the conversation between her aunt and the detective that followed it, without more than casual interest. Nevertheless, that conversation was to have vital results later on. “Your point about that thumbprint on th

But Dale could bear it no longer. The sight of her lover, beaten, submissive, his head bowed, waiting obediently like a common criminal for the detective to lock his wrists in steel broke down her last defenses. She rushed into the center of the room, between Bailey and the detective, her eyes wild with terror, her words stumbling over each other in her eagerness to get them out. “Oh, no! I can’t stand it! I’ll tell you everything!” she cried frenziedly. “He got to the foot of the stair-case—Ric

A few moments later Jack Bailey, seeing a thin glow of candlelight from the attic above and hearing Lizzie’s protesting voice, made his way up there. He found them in the trunk room, a dusty, dingy apartment lined with high closets along the walls—the floor littered with an incongruous assortment of attic objects—two battered trunks, a clothes hamper, an old sewing machine, a broken-backed kitchen chair, two dilapidated suitcases and a shabby satchel that might once have been a woman’s dressing

“Doctor, why did you put out that candle?” Miss Cornelia’s voice cut the blackness like a knife. “I didn’t—I—” “You did—I saw you do it.” The brief exchange of accusation and denial took but an instant of time, as the mantel swung wide open. The next instant there was a rush of feet across the floor, from the fireplace—the shock of a collision between two bodies—the sound of a heavy fall. “What was that?” queried Bailey dazedly, with a feeling as if some great winged creature had brushed at him

He stepped back in the doorway, looked out, then turned to them again. “I come in, please?” he said pathetically, his hands quivering. “I not like to stay in dark.” Miss Cornelia took pity on him. “Come in, Billy, of course. What is it? Anything the matter?” Billy glanced about nervously. “Man with sore head.” “What about him?” “Act very strange.” Again Billy’s slim hands trembled. Beresford broke in. “The man who fell into the room downstairs?” Billy nodded. “Yes. On second floor, walking aroun

“Out 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

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

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 th