BATS IN THE WALL.
Left to himself within the banking-room, Detective Hook, with the
closest scrutiny, began a systematic examination of the rifled vault
and its surroundings.
There was no evidence that the bank had been entered other than by the
rear doors from the Rector street side.
And these doors, strange to relate, were unprotected, save by ordinary
spring locks.
Evidently the officers of the Webster Bank had relied upon the solidity
of their vault doors for protection, and upon the fact that with plate
glass windows upon two sides, facing Rector street and Broadway, the
policeman on the beat could see the entire front of the vault as
plainly as though it had been standing in the street itself, by the
light of the gas-burner, kept burning the entire night directly in
front of the combination lock.
And, after all, no better protection could be devised than this,
providing always, the policeman of the beat is true to his trust.
And yet the deed had been done, and, stranger still the officer in
whose charge this portion of Broadway lay had put in no appearance yet.
Crowbar and jimmy, powder-can and fuse, and the shattered door itself,
told with startling plainness the methods by which the bank-robbers had
attained their end.
Detective Hook examined each point with close attention.
Nothing of value remained in the vault.
It might have contained millions--it might have contained cents--the
bank officers alone could tell.
"There is something altogether out of the usual order in this affair,"
he muttered to himself, as he stood musing before the rifled vault.
"The strange hints received by me from Cutts have proved both true and
false. Instead of this clerk and a gang of desperate burglars, I find
the vault already robbed and this young man with his strange story,
involving Cutts himself, standing here alone.
"I don't like the look of it. I believe this boy is as innocent as I
am, Caleb Hook; there is something else at the bottom of all this. If I
don't greatly mistake----
"Hello! Well, what have you discovered?"
"Nothing," replied Policeman Jones, now appearing at the door. "There's
not a soul anywhere about, except an old crazy woman walking up and
down before Trinity Church, muttering to herself. I questioned her
closely, but she knows nothing at all."
"Did you see anything of Officer Flaherty, who ought to be on this
beat?"
"Not a thing, and I've searched for him everywhere, too."
"I'll see that he is provided for, the careless rascal," muttered the
detective, "and you, Brady"--addressing the second policeman who had
also appeared--"what luck in the church-yard? Any tracks in the snow?"
"The tracks of two men, Mr. Hook, but they are pointing this way. Just
over the fence are others, too. I should say several persons had been
tramping around there."
"Remain here and guard what is left," said the detective, briefly.
"I'll examine into this for myself."
He hastily passed to the street, leaving the two policemen in charge.
"Now for the Trinity church-yard," he muttered, as he sprang toward
the low wall at the point before which the strange woman had kneeled
but a few moments before. "I've got a genuine mystery on my hands at
last, I fancy, and that's what I've been sighing for these last three
months---- Ha, Schneider, where's your prisoner? Surely you are not
back from the station as soon as this?"
The stout German policeman, panting for a breath, stood trembling by
his side.
"Dunder und blitzen! now mebbe you kills me, Mr. Hook. I swear it vos
not my fault."
"Not your fault! Have you lost your prisoner--but that is impossible!
Speak, you Dutch scoundrel! Where is the boy I gave into your charge?"
"Gone, Mr. Hook! Disappeared unter mein very nose. I take not mein
eyes from him, und I looks for him und he ish not dere. I tink dere's
some devil vork mit dis, by shiminy, I do!"
A moment later, and Detective Hook, with the frightened German by his
side, stood beneath the high wall skirting Trinity church-yard on
the New Church street side, at the spot where Frank Mansfield had so
strangely disappeared.
Twice over had the wretched Schneider told his tale, without rendering
matters in the least more clear.
If he told the truth--and he related the facts so circumstantially that
there could be no doubt of that--there was absolutely no explanation to
be had.
There was the dead wall upon one side broken only by the iron
doors, leading to the vaults beneath the bank, which had not been
opened, perhaps in a century, filled with the moldering bones of the
long-forgotten dead, and the structure of the elevated railroad upon
the other, with the dark outlines of the building upon the opposite
side of the street rising just beyond.
That the boy could have crossed the street was a simple impossibility.
Not a trace of human foot was visible in the freshly fallen snow.
Upon the sidewalk beneath the wall the detective had no difficulty in
tracing his footsteps.
But this only served to double the mystery.
They all pointed one way--in the direction of the station toward which
they had been going, and at the precise point where the boy had halted
when the attention of his conductor had been attracted by the bat-like
cry from the wall above they ceased to appear at all.
It was impossible that the vanished prisoner could have advanced or
retreated, crossed the street--moved up or down.
Deeply puzzled, the detective hurried to Rector street again, and
leaped the iron fence at the first available point, landing among the
stones of the grave-yard beyond.
Nor did he leave it until an hour had passed, and but little the wiser
then.
The tracks of two men crossing toward the Rector street side of
the grave-yard from a point overlooking the place where Frank had
disappeared were found and carefully measured.
At this point, also, the snow was found to be much disturbed, both on
the ground itself and upon the vines overhanging the wall.
To all appearance, a number of persons had been moving about here, but
their foot-prints seemed to lead nowhere, extending simply up and down
the wall.
What did it mean?
Detective Hook had been called upon to solve many mysteries in his
time, but never before had he encountered one so deep as this.
He was baffled; he could not deny it.
Accompanied by the crestfallen Schneider, he repaired to the station at
last, and reported the occurrences of the night.
In a short space of time every newspaper in the city was preparing for
their morning issues an account of the bold robbery of the Webster
National Bank.
The great clock in Trinity steeple had rang out the hour of four, when
Detective Hook, still hovering about the scene of his late defeat,
turned, for the twentieth time that night, the corner of Rector street
and Broadway.
As he did so there brushed past him the figure of a woman, plainly but
neatly dressed, with gray hair hanging down from beneath her worsted
hood, and wild, roving eyes, moving restlessly from one object to
another as she walked along.
"Bats in the wall! Bats in the wall!" she muttered, as she passed.
"Blessed be the bats in the wall for what they have done for my erring
boy this night!"