“Hello—what’s this?” he said sharply, his eye lighting on the broken

glass below the shattered French window. He picked up a piece of glass

and examined it.

Dale cleared her throat. “It was broken from the outside a few minutes

ago,” she said.

“The outside?” Instantly the detective had pulled aside a blind and was

staring out into the darkness.

“Yes. And then that letter was thrown in.” She pointed to the

threatening missive on the center table.

Anderson picked it up, glanced through it, laid it down. All his

movements were quick and sure—each executed with the minimum expense of

effort.

“H’m,” he said in a calm voice that held a glint of humor. “Curious,

the anonymous letter complex! Apparently someone considers you an

undesirable tenant!”

Miss Cornelia took up the tale.

“There are some things I haven’t told you yet,” she said. “This house

belonged to the late Courtleigh Fleming.” He glanced at her sharply.

“The Union Bank?”

“Yes. I rented it for the summer and moved in last Monday. We have not

had a really quiet night since I came. The very first night I saw a man

with an electric flashlight making his way through the shrubbery!”

“You poor dear!” from Dale sympathetically. “And you were here alone!”

“Well, I had Lizzie. And,” said Miss Cornelia with enormous importance,

opening the drawer of the center table, “I had my revolver. I know so

little about these things, Mr. Anderson, that if I didn’t hit a

burglar, I knew I’d hit somebody or something!” and she gazed with

innocent awe directly down the muzzle of her beloved weapon, then waved

it with an airy gesture beneath the detective’s nose.

Anderson gave an involuntary start, then his eyes lit up with grim

mirth.

“Would you mind putting that away?” he said suavely. “I like to get in

the papers as much as anybody, but I don’t want to have them say—_omit

flowers_.”

Miss Cornelia gave him a glare of offended pride, but he endured it

with such quiet equanimity that she merely replaced the revolver in the

drawer, with a hurt expression, and waited for him to open the next

topic of conversation.

He finished his preliminary survey of the room and returned to her.

“Now you say you don’t think anybody has got upstairs yet?” he queried.

Miss Cornelia regarded the alcove stairs.

“I think not. I’m a very light sleeper, especially since the papers

have been so full of the exploits of this criminal they call the Bat.

He’s in them again tonight.” She nodded toward the evening paper.

The detective smiled faintly.

“Yes, he’s contrived to surround himself with such an air of mystery

that it verges on the supernatural—or seems that way to newspapermen.”

“I confess,” admitted Miss Cornelia, “I’ve thought of him in this

connection.” She looked at Anderson to see how he would take the

suggestion but the latter merely smiled again, this time more broadly.

“That’s going rather a long way for a theory,” he said. “And the Bat is

not in the habit of giving warnings.”

“Nevertheless,” she insisted, “somebody has been trying to get into

this house, night after night.”

Anderson seemed to be revolving a theory in his mind.

“Any liquor stored here?” he asked.

Miss Cornelia nodded. “Yes.”

“What?”

Miss Cornelia beamed at him maliciously. “Eleven bottles of home-made

elderberry wine.”

“You’re safe.” The detective smiled ruefully. He picked up the evening

paper, glanced at it, shook his head. “I’d forget the Bat in all this.

You can always tell when the Bat has had anything to do with a crime.

When he’s through, he signs his name to it.”

Miss Cornelia sat bolt upright. “His name? I thought nobody knew his

name?”

The detective made a little gesture of apology. “That was a figure of

speech. The newspapers named him the Bat because he moved with

incredible rapidity, always at night, and by signing his name I mean he

leaves the symbol of his identity—the Bat, which can see in the dark.”

“I wish I could,” said Miss Cornelia, striving to seem unimpressed.

“These country lights are always going out.”

Anderson’s face grew stern. “Sometimes he draws the outline of a bat at

the scene of the crime. Once, in some way, he got hold of a real bat,

and nailed it to the wall.”

Dale, listening, could not repress a shudder at the gruesome

picture—and Miss Cornelia’s hands gave an involuntary twitch as her

knitting needles clicked together. Anderson seemed by no means

unconscious of the effect he had created.

“How many people in this house, Miss Van Gorder?”

“My niece and myself.” Miss Cornelia indicated Dale, who had picked up

her wrap and was starting to leave the room. “Lizzie Allen—who has been

my personal maid ever since I was a child—the Japanese butler, and the

gardener. The cook and the housemaid left this morning—frightened

away.”

She smiled as she finished her description. Dale reached the door and

passed slowly out into the hall. The detective gave her a single, sharp

glance as she made her exit. He seemed to think over the factors Miss

Cornelia had mentioned.

“Well,” he said, after a slight pause, “you can have a good night’s

sleep tonight. I’ll stay right here in the dark and watch.”

“Would you like some coffee to keep you awake?”

Anderson nodded. “Thank you.” His voice sank lower. “Do the servants

know who I am?”

“Only Lizzie, my maid.”

His eyes fixed hers. “I wouldn’t tell anyone I’m remaining up all

night,” he said.

A formless fear rose in Miss Cornelia’s mind. “You don’t suspect my

household?” she said in a low voice.

He spoke with emphasis—all the more pronounced because of the quietude

of his tone.

“I’m not taking any chances,” he said determinedly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS

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 might

have anything in his pocket from a set of terrifying false whiskers to

a bomb!

Miss Cornelia, obedient to the detective’s instructions, promptly told

the whitest of fibs for Lizzie’s benefit.

“The maid will show you to your room now and you can make yourself

comfortable for the night.” There—that would mislead Lizzie, without

being quite a lie.

“My toilet is made for an occasion like this when I’ve got my gun

loaded,” answered Anderson carelessly. The allusion to the gun made

Lizzie start nervously, unhappily for her, for it drew his attention to

her and he now transfixed her with a stare.

“This is the maid you referred to?” he inquired. Miss Cornelia

assented. He drew nearer to the unhappy Lizzie.

“What’s your name?” he asked, turning to her.

“E-Elizabeth Allen,” stammered Lizzie, feeling like a small and

distrustful sparrow in the toils of an officious python.

Anderson seemed to run through a mental rogues gallery of other

criminals named Elizabeth Allen that he had known.

“How old are you?” he proceeded.

Lizzie looked at her mistress despairingly. “Have I got to answer

that?” she wailed. Miss Cornelia nodded—inexorably.

Lizzie braced herself. “Thirty-two,” she said, with an arch toss of her

head.

The detective looked surprised and slightly amused.

“She’s fifty if she’s a day,” said Miss Cornelia treacherously in spite

of a look from Lizzie that would have melted a stone.

The trace of a smile appeared and vanished on the detective’s face.

“Now, Lizzie,” he said sternly, “do you ever walk in your sleep?”

“I do not,” said Lizzie indignantly.

“Don’t care for the country, I suppose?”

“I do not!”

“Or detectives?” Anderson deigned to be facetious.

“I _do not!_” There could be no doubt as to the sincerity of Lizzie’s

answer.

“All right, Lizzie. Be calm. I can stand it,” said the detective with

treacherous suavity. But he favored her with a long and careful

scrutiny before he moved to the table and picked up the note that had

been thrown through the window. Quietly he extended it beneath Lizzie’s

nose.

“Ever see this before?” he said crisply, watching her face.

Lizzie read the note with bulging eyes, her face horror-stricken. When

she had finished, she made a gesture of wild disclaimer that nearly

removed a portion of Anderson’s left ear.

“Mercy on us!” she moaned, mentally invoking not only her patron saint

but all the rosary of heaven to protect herself and her mistress.

But the detective still kept his eye on her.

“Didn’t write it yourself, did you?” he queried curtly.

“I did not!” said Lizzie angrily. “I did _not!_”

“And—you’re sure you don’t walk in your sleep?” The bare idea strained

Lizzie’s nerves to the breaking point.

“When I get into bed in this house I wouldn’t put my feet out for a

million dollars!” she said with heartfelt candor. Even Anderson was

compelled to grin at this.

“Then I won’t ask you to,” he said, relaxing considerably; “That’s more

money than I’m worth, Lizzie.”

“Well, _I’ll say it is!_” quoth Lizzie, now thoroughly aroused, and

flounced out of the room in high dudgeon, her pompadour bristling,

before he had time to interrogate her further.

He replaced the note on the table and turned back to Miss Cornelia. If

he had found any clue to the mystery in Lizzie’s demeanor, she could

not read it in his manner.

“Now, what about the butler?” he said.

“Nothing about him—except that he was Courtleigh Fleming’s servant.”

Anderson paused. “Do you consider that significant?”

A shadow appeared behind him deep in the alcove—a vague, listening

figure—Dale—on tiptoe, conspiratorial, taking pains not to draw the

attention of the others to her presence. But both Miss Cornelia and

Anderson were too engrossed in their conversation to notice her.

Miss Cornelia hesitated.

“Isn’t it possible that there is a connection between the colossal

theft at the Union Bank and _these_ disturbances?” she said.

Anderson seemed to think over the question.

“What do you mean?” he asked as Dale slowly moved into the room from

the alcove, silently closing the alcove doors behind her, and still

unobserved.

“Suppose,” said Miss Cornelia slowly, “that Courtleigh Fleming took

that money from his own bank and concealed it in this house?” The

eavesdropper grew rigid.

“That’s the theory you gave headquarters, isn’t it?” said Anderson.

“But I’ll tell you how headquarters figures it out. In the first place,

the cashier is missing. In the second place, if Courtleigh Fleming did

it and got as far as Colorado, he had it with him when he died, and the

facts apparently don’t bear that out. In the third place, suppose he

had hidden the money in or around this house. Why did he rent it to

you?”

“But he didn’t,” said Miss Cornelia obstinately, “I leased this house

from his nephew, his heir.”

The detective smiled tolerantly.

“Well, I wouldn’t struggle like that for a theory,” he said, the

professional note coming back to his voice. “The cashier’s

_missing_—that’s the answer.”

Miss Cornelia resented his offhand demolition of the mental card-castle

she had erected with such pride.

“I have read a great deal on the detection of crime,” she said hotly,

“and—”

“Well, we all have our little hobbies,” he said tolerantly. “A good

many people rather fancy themselves as detectives and run around

looking for clues under the impression that a clue is a big and vital

factor that sticks up like—well, like a sore thumb. The fact is that

the criminal takes care of the big and important factors. It’s only the

little ones he may overlook. To go back to your friend the Bat, it’s

because of his skill in little things that he’s still at large.”

“Then _you_ don’t think there’s a chance that the money from the Union

Bank is in this house?” persisted Miss Cornelia.

“I think it very unlikely.”

Miss Cornelia put her knitting away and rose. She still clung

tenaciously to her own theories but her belief in them had been badly

shaken.

“If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your room,” she said a little

stiffly. The detective stepped back to let her pass.

“Sorry to spoil your little theory,” he said, and followed her to the

door. If either had noticed the unobtrusive listener to their

conversation, neither made a sign.

The moment the door had closed on them Dale sprang into action. She

seemed a different girl from the one who had left the room so

inconspicuously such a short time before. There were two bright spots

of color in her cheeks and she was obviously laboring under great

excitement. She went quickly to the alcove doors—they opened

softly—disclosing the young man who had said that he was Brooks the new

gardener—and yet not the same young man—for his assumed air of

servitude had dropped from him like a cloak, revealing him as a young

fellow at least of the same general social class as Dale’s if not a

fellow-inhabitant of the select circle where Van Gorders revolved about

Van Gorders, and a man’s great-grandfather was more important than the

man himself.

Dale cautioned him with a warning finger as he advanced into the room.

“Sh! Sh!” she whispered. “Be careful! That man’s a detective!”

Brooks gave a hunted glance at the door into the hall.

“Then they’ve traced me here,” he said in a dejected voice.

“I don’t think so.”

He made a gesture of helplessness.

“I couldn’t get back to my rooms,” he said in a whisper. “If they’ve

searched them,” he paused, “as they’re sure to—they’ll find your

letters to me.” He paused again. “Your aunt doesn’t suspect anything?”

“No, I told her I’d engaged a gardener—and that’s all there was about

it.”

He came nearer to her. “Dale!” he murmured in a tense voice. “You

_know_ I didn’t take that money!” he said with boyish simplicity.

All the loyalty of first-love was in her answer.

“Of course! I believe in you absolutely!” she said. He caught her in

his arms and kissed her—gratefully, passionately. Then the galling

memory of the predicament in which he stood, the hunt already on his

trail, came back to him. He released her gently, still holding one of

her hands.

“But—the police here!” he stammered, turning away. “What does that

mean?”

Dale swiftly informed him of the situation.

“Aunt Cornelia says people have been trying to break into this house

for days—at night.”

Brooks ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of bewilderment. Then

he seemed to catch at a hope.

“What sort of people?” he queried sharply.

Dale was puzzled. “She doesn’t know.”

The excitement in her lover’s manner came to a head. “That proves

exactly what I’ve contended right along,” he said, thudding one fist

softly in the palm of the other. “Through some underneath channel old

Fleming has been selling those securities for months, turning them into

cash. And somebody knows about it, and knows that that money is hidden

here. Don’t you see? Your Aunt Cornelia has crabbed the game by coming

here.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police that? Now they think, because you ran

away—”

“Ran away! The only chance I had was a few hours to myself to try to

prove what actually happened.”

“Why don’t you tell the detective what you think?” said Dale at her

wits’ end. “That Courtleigh Fleming took the money and that it is still

here?”

Her lover’s face grew somber.

“He’d take me into custody at once and I’d have no chance to search.”

He was searching now—his eyes roved about the

living-room—walls—ceiling—hopefully—desperately—looking for a clue—the

tiniest clue to support his theory.

“Why are you so sure it is here?” queried Dale.

Brooks explained. “You must remember Fleming was no ordinary defaulter

and _he_ had no intention of being exiled to a foreign country. He

wanted to come back here and take his place in the community while I

was in the pen.”

“But even then—”

He interrupted her. “Listen, dear—” He crossed to the billiard-room

door, closed it firmly, returned.

“The architect that built this house was an old friend of mine,” he

said in hushed accents. “We were together in France and you know the

way fellows get to talking when they’re far away and cut off—” He

paused, seeing the cruel gleam of the flame throwers—two figures

huddled in a foxhole, whiling away the terrible hours of waiting by

muttered talk.

“Just an hour or two before—a shell got this friend of mine,” he

resumed, “he told me he had built a hidden room in this house.”

“Where?” gasped Dale.

Brooks shook his head. “I don’t know. We never got to finish that

conversation. But I remember what he said. He said, ‘You watch old

Fleming. If I get mine over here it won’t break his heart. He didn’t

want any living being to know about that room.’”

Now Dale was as excited as he.

“Then you think the money is in this hidden room?”

“I do,” said Brooks decidedly. “I don’t think Fleming took it away with

him. He was too shrewd for that. No, he meant to come back all right,

the minute he got the word the bank had been looted. And he’d fixed

things so I’d be railroaded to prison—you wouldn’t understand, but it

was pretty neat. And then the fool nephew rents this house the minute

he’s dead, and whoever knows about the money—”

“Jack! Why isn’t it the nephew who is trying to break in?”

“He wouldn’t _have_ to break in. He could make an excuse and come in

any time.”

He clenched his hands despairingly.

“If I could only get hold of a blue-print of this place!” he muttered.

Dale’s face fell. It was sickening to be so close to the secret—and yet

not find it. “Oh, Jack, I’m so confused and worried!” she confessed,

with a little sob.

Brooks put his hands on her shoulders in an effort to cheer her

spirits.

“Now listen, dear,” he said firmly, “this isn’t as hard as it sounds.

I’ve got a clear night to work in—and as true as I’m standing here,

that money’s in this house. Listen, honey—it’s like this.” He

pantomimed the old nursery rhyme of _The House that Jack Built_,

“Here’s the house that Courtleigh Fleming built—here, somewhere, is the

Hidden Room in the house that Courtleigh Fleming built—and

here—somewhere—pray Heaven—is the money—in the Hidden Room—in the house

that Courtleigh Fleming built. When you’re low in your mind, just say

that over!”

She managed a faint smile. “I’ve forgotten it already,” she said,

drooping.

He still strove for an offhand gaiety that he did not feel.

“Why, look here!” and she followed the play of his hands obediently,

like a tired child, “it’s a sort of game, dearest. ‘Money, money—who’s

got the money?’ _You_ know!” For the dozenth time he stared at the

unrevealing walls of the room. “For that matter,” he added, “the Hidden

Room may be behind these very walls.”

He looked about for a tool, a poker, anything that would sound the

walls and test them for hollow spaces. Ah, he had it—that driver in the

bag of golf clubs over in the corner. He got the driver and stood

wondering where he had best begin. That blank wall above the fireplace

looked as promising as any. He tapped it gently with the golf

club—afraid to make too much noise and yet anxious to test the wall as

thoroughly as possible. A dull, heavy reverberation answered his

stroke—nothing hollow there apparently.

As he tried another spot, again thunder beat the long roll on its iron

drum outside, in the night. The lights blinked—wavered—recovered.

“The lights are going out again,” said Dale dully, her excitement sunk

into a stupefied calm.

“Let them go! The less light the better for me. The only thing to do is

to go over this house room by room.” He pointed to the billiard room

door. “What’s in there?”

“The billiard room.” She was thinking hard. “Jack! Perhaps Courtleigh

Fleming’s nephew would know where the blue-prints are!”

He looked dubious. “It’s a chance, but not a very good one,” he said.

“Well—” He led the way into the billiard room and began to rap at

random upon its walls while Dale listened intently for any echo that

might betray the presence of a hidden chamber or sliding panel.

Thus it happened that Lizzie received the first real thrill of what was

to prove to her—and to others—a sensational and hideous night. For,

coming into the living-room to lay a cloth for Mr. Anderson’s night

suppers not only did the lights blink threateningly and the thunder

roll, but a series of spirit raps was certainly to be heard coming from

the region of the billiard room.

“Oh, my God!” she wailed, and the next instant the lights went out,

leaving her in inky darkness. With a loud shriek she bolted out of the

room.

Thunder—lightning—dashing of rain on the streaming glass of the

windows—the storm hallooing its hounds. Dale huddled close to her lover

as they groped their way back to the living-room, cautiously, doing

their best to keep from stumbling against some heavy piece of furniture

whose fall would arouse the house.

“There’s a candle on the table, Jack, if I can find the table.” Her

outstretched hands touched a familiar object. “Here it is.” She fumbled

for a moment. “Have you any matches?”

“Yes.” He struck one—another—lit the candle—set it down on the table.

In the weak glow of the little taper, whose tiny flame illuminated but

a portion of the living-room, his face looked tense and strained.

“It’s pretty nearly hopeless,” he said, “if all the walls are paneled

like that.”

As if in mockery of his words and his quest, a muffled knocking that

seemed to come from the ceiling of the very room he stood in answered

his despair.

“What’s that?” gasped Dale.

They listened. The knocking was repeated—knock—knock—knock—knock.

“Someone else is looking for the Hidden Room!” muttered Brooks, gazing

up at the ceiling intently, as if he could tear from it the secret of

this new mystery by sheer strength of will.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE GLEAMING EYE

“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 noiselessly into the alcove. “It may be the Jap!” he

whispered.

Knock—knock—knock—knock! This time the mysterious rapping seemed to

come from the upper hall.

“If it is the Jap, I’ll get him!” Brooks’s voice was tense with

resolution. He hesitated—made for the hall door—tiptoed out into the

darkness around the main staircase, leaving Dale alone in the

living-room beset by shadowy terrors.

Utter silence succeeded his noiseless departure. Even the storm lulled

for a moment. Dale stood thinking, wondering, searching desperately for

some way to help her lover.

At last a resolution formed in her mind. She went to the city

telephone.

“Hello,” she said in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder now and

then to make sure she was not overheard. “1-2-4—please—yes, that’s

right. Hello—is that the country club? Is Mr. Richard Fleming there?

Yes, I’ll hold the wire.”

She looked about nervously. Had something moved in that corner of

blackness where her candle did not pierce? No! How silly of her!

Buzz-buzz on the telephone. She picked up the receiver again.

“Hello—is this Mr. Fleming? This is Miss Ogden—Dale Ogden. I know it

must seem odd my calling you this late, but—I wonder if you could come

over here for a few minutes. Yes—tonight.” Her voice grew stronger. “I

wouldn’t trouble you but—it’s awfully important. Hold the wire a

moment.” She put down the phone and made another swift survey of the

room, listened furtively at the door—all clear! She returned to the

phone.

“Hello—Mr. Fleming—I’ll wait outside the house on the drive. It—it’s a

confidential matter. Thank you so much.”

She hung up the phone, relieved—not an instant too soon, for, as she

crossed toward the fireplace to add a new log to the dying glow of the

fire, the hall door opened and Anderson, the detective, came softly in

with an unlighted candle in his hand.

Her composure almost deserted her. How much had he heard? What

deduction would he draw if he had heard? An assignation, perhaps! Well,

she could stand that; she could stand anything to secure the next few

hours of liberty for Jack. For that length of time she and the law were

at war; she and this man were at war.

But his first words relieved her fears.

“Spooky sort of place in the dark, isn’t it?” he said casually.

“Yes—rather.” If he would only go away before Brooks came back or

Richard Fleming arrived! But he seemed in a distressingly chatty frame

of mind.

“Left me upstairs without a match,” continued Anderson. “I found my way

down by walking part of the way and falling the rest. Don’t suppose

I’ll ever find the room I left my toothbrush in!” He laughed, lighting

the candle in his hand from the candle on the table.

“You’re not going to stay up all night, are you?” said Dale nervously,

hoping he would take the hint. But he seemed entirely oblivious of such

minor considerations as sleep. He took out a cigar.

“Oh, I may doze a bit,” he said. He eyed her with a certain approval.

She was a darned pretty girl and she looked intelligent. “I suppose you

have a theory of your own about these intrusions you’ve been having

here? Or apparently having.”

“I knew nothing about them until tonight.”

“Still,” he persisted conversationally, “you know about them now.” But

when she remained silent, “Is Miss Van Gorder usually—of a nervous

temperament? Imagines she sees things, and all that?”

“I don’t think so.” Dale’s voice was strained. Where was Brooks? What

had happened to him?

Anderson puffed on his cigar, pondering. “Know the Flemings?” he asked.

“I’ve met Mr. Richard Fleming once or twice.”

Something in her tone caused him to glance at her. “Nice fellow?”

“I don’t know him at all well.”

“Know the cashier of the Union Bank?” he shot at her suddenly.

“No!” She strove desperately to make the denial convincing but she

could not hide the little tremor in her voice.

The detective mused.

“Fellow of good family, I understand,” he said, eyeing her. “Very

popular. That’s what’s behind most of these bank embezzlements—men

getting into society and spending more than they make.”

Dale hailed the tinkle of the city telephone with an inward sigh of

relief. The detective moved to answer the house phone on the wall by

the alcove, mistaking the direction of the ring. Dale corrected him

quickly.

“No, the other one. That’s the house phone.” Anderson looked the

apparatus over.

“No connection with the outside, eh?”

“No,” said Dale absent-mindedly. “Just from room to room in the house.”

He accepted her explanation and answered the other telephone.

“Hello—hello—what the—” He moved the receiver hook up and down, without

result, and gave it up. “This line sounds dead,” he said.

“It was all right a few minutes ago,” said Dale without thinking.

“You were using it a few minutes ago?”

She hesitated—what use to deny what she had already admitted, for all

practical purposes.

“Yes.”

The city telephone rang again. The detective pounced upon it.

“Hello—yes—yes—this is Anderson—go ahead.” He paused, while the tiny

voice in the receiver buzzed for some seconds. Then he interrupted it

impatiently.

“You’re sure of that, are you? I see. All right. ‘By.”

He hung up the receiver and turned swiftly on Dale. “Did I understand

you to say that you were not acquainted with the cashier of the Union

Bank?” he said to her with a new note in his voice.

Dale stared ahead of her blankly. It had come! She did not reply.

Anderson went on ruthlessly.

“That was headquarters, Miss Ogden. They have found some letters in

Bailey’s room which seem to indicate that you were not telling the

entire truth just now.”

He paused, waiting for her answer. “What letters?” she said wearily.

“From you to Jack Bailey—showing that you had recently become engaged

to him.”

Dale decided to make a clean breast of it, or as clean a one as she

dared.

“Very well,” she said in an even voice, “that’s true.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” There was menace beneath his suavity.

She thought swiftly. Apparent frankness seemed to be the only resource

left her. She gave him a candid smile.

“It’s been a secret. I haven’t even told my aunt yet.” Now she let

indignation color her tones. “How can the police be so stupid as to

accuse Jack Bailey, a young man and about to be married? Do you think

he would wreck his future like that?”

“Some people wouldn’t call it wrecking a future to lay away a million

dollars,” said Anderson ominously. He came closer to Dale, fixing her

with his eyes. “Do you know _where_ Bailey is now?” He spoke slowly and

menacingly.

She did not flinch.

“No.”

The detective paused.

“Miss Ogden,” he said, still with that hidden threat in his voice, “in

the last minute or so the Union Bank case and certain things in this

house have begun to tie up pretty close together. Bailey disappeared

this morning. Have you heard from him since?”

Her eyes met his without weakening, her voice was cool and composed.

“No.”

The detective did not comment on her answer. She could not tell from

his face whether he thought she had told the truth or lied. He turned

away from her brusquely.

“I’ll ask you to bring Miss Van Gorder here,” he said in his

professional voice.

“Why do you want her?” Dale blazed at him rebelliously.

He was quiet. “Because this case is taking on a new phase.”

“You don’t think I know anything about that money?” she said, a little

wildly, hoping that a display of sham anger might throw him off the

trail he seemed to be following.

He seemed to accept her words, cynically, at their face value.

“No,” he said, “but you know somebody who does.” Dale hesitated, sought

for a biting retort, found none. It did not matter; any respite, no

matter how momentary, from these probing questions, would be a relief.

She silently took one of the lighted candles and left the living-room

to search for her aunt.

Left alone, the detective reflected for a moment, then picking up the

one lighted candle that remained, commenced a systematic examination of

the living-room. His methods were thorough, but if, when he came to the

end of his quest, he had made any new discoveries, the reticent

composure of his face did not betray the fact. When he had finished he

turned patiently toward the billiard room—the little flame of his

candle was swallowed up in its dark recesses—he closed the door of the

living-room behind him. The storm was dying away now, but a few flashes

of lightning still flickered, lighting up the darkness of the deserted

living-room now and then with a harsh, brief glare.

A lightning flash—a shadow cast abruptly on the shade of one of the

French windows, to disappear as abruptly as the flash was blotted

out—the shadow of a man—a prowler—feeling his way through the

lightning-slashed darkness to the terrace door. The detective? Brooks?

The Bat? The lightning flash was too brief for any observer to have

recognized the stealing shape—if any observer had been there.

But the lack of an observer was promptly remedied. Just as the shadowy

shape reached the terrace door and its shadow-fingers closed over the

knob, Lizzie entered the deserted living-room on stumbling feet. She

was carrying a tray of dishes and food—some cold meat on a platter, a

cup and saucer, a roll, a butter pat—and she walked slowly, with terror

only one leap behind her and blank darkness ahead.

She had only reached the table and was preparing to deposit her tray

and beat a shameful retreat, when a sound behind her made her turn. The

key in the door from the terrace to the alcove had clicked. Paralyzed

with fright she stared and waited, and the next moment a formless

thing, a blacker shadow in a world of shadows, passed swiftly in and up

the small staircase.

But not only a shadow. To Lizzie’s terrified eyes it bore an eye, a

single gleaming eye, just above the level of the stair rail, and this

eye was turned on her.

It was too much. She dropped the tray on the table with a crash and

gave vent to a piercing shriek that would have shamed the siren of a

fire engine.

Miss Cornelia and Anderson, rushing in from the hall and the billiard

room respectively, each with a lighted candle, found her gasping and

clutching at the table for support.

“For the love of heaven, what’s wrong?” cried Miss Cornelia

irritatedly. The coffeepot she was carrying in her other hand spilled a

portion of its boiling contents on Lizzie’s shoe and Lizzie screamed

anew and began to dance up and down on the uninjured foot.

“Oh, my foot—my foot!” she squealed hysterically. “My foot!”

Miss Cornelia tried to shake her back to her senses.

“My patience! Did you yell like that because you stubbed your toe?”

“You scalded it!” cried Lizzie wildly. “It went up the staircase!”

“Your _toe_ went up the staircase?”

“No, no! An eye—an eye as big as a saucer! It ran right up that

staircase—” She indicated the alcove with a trembling forefinger. Miss

Cornelia put her coffeepot and her candle down on the table and opened

her mouth to express her frank opinion of her factotum’s sanity. But

here the detective took charge.

“Now see here,” he said with some sternness to the quaking Lizzie,

“stop this racket and tell me what you saw!”

“A ghost!” persisted Lizzie, still hopping around on one leg. “It came

right through that door and ran up the stairs—oh—” and she seemed

prepared to scream again as Dale, white-faced, came in from the hall,

followed by Billy and Brooks, the latter holding still another candle.

“Who screamed?” said Dale tensely.

“I did!” Lizzie wailed, “I saw a ghost!” She turned to Miss Cornelia.

“I begged you not to come here,” she vociferated. “I begged you on my

bended knees. There’s a graveyard not a quarter of a mile away.”

“Yes, and one more scare like that, Lizzie Allen, and you’ll have me

lying in it,” said her mistress unsympathetically. She moved up to

examine the scene of Lizzie’s ghostly misadventure, while Anderson

began to interrogate its heroine.

“Now, Lizzie,” he said, forcing himself to urbanity, “what did you

really see?”

“I told you what I saw.”

His manner grew somewhat threatening.

“You’re not trying to frighten Miss Van Gorder into leaving this house

and going back to the city?”

“Well, if I am,” said Lizzie with grim, unconscious humor, “I’m giving

myself an awful good scare, too, ain’t I?”

The two glared at each other as Miss Cornelia returned from her survey

of the alcove.

“Somebody who had a key could have got in here, Mr. Anderson,” she said

annoyedly. “That terrace door’s been unbolted from the inside.”

Lizzie groaned. “I told you so,” she wailed. “I knew something was

going to happen tonight. I heard rappings all over the house today, and

the ouija-board spelled Bat!”

The detective recovered his poise. “I think I see the answer to your

puzzle, Miss Van Gorder,” he said, with a scornful glance at Lizzie. “A

hysterical and not very reliable woman, anxious to go back to the city

and terrified over and over by the shutting off of the electric

lights.”

If looks could slay, his characterization of Lizzie would have laid him

dead at her feet at that instant. Miss Van Gorder considered his

theory.

“I wonder,” she said.

The detective rubbed his hands together more cheerfully.

“A good night’s sleep and—” he began, but the irrepressible Lizzie

interrupted him.

“My God, we’re not going to bed, are we?” she said, with her eyes as

big as saucers.

He gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder, which she obviously resented.

“You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said. “Lock your door and say

your prayers, and leave the rest to me.”

Lizzie muttered something inaudible and rebellious, but now Miss

Cornelia added her protestations to his.

“That’s very good advice,” she said decisively. “You take her, Dale.”

Reluctantly, with a dragging of feet and scared glances cast back over

her shoulder, Lizzie allowed herself to be drawn toward the door and

the main staircase by Dale. But she did not depart without one Parthian

shot.

“I’m not going to bed!” she wailed as Dale’s strong young arm helped

her out into the hall. “Do you think I want to wake up in the morning

with my throat cut?” Then the creaking of the stairs, and Dale’s

soothing voice reassuring her as she painfully clambered toward the

third floor, announced that Lizzie, for some time at least, had been

removed as an active factor from the puzzling equation of Cedarcrest.

Anderson confronted Miss Cornelia with certain relief.

“There are certain things I want to discuss with you, Miss Van Gorder,”

he said. “But they can wait until tomorrow morning.”

Miss Cornelia glanced about the room. His manner was reassuring.

“Do you think all this—pure imagination?” she said.

“Don’t you?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You go upstairs and go to bed

comfortably. I’ll make a careful search of the house before I settle

down, and if I find anything at all suspicious, I’ll promise to let you

know.”

She agreed to that, and after sending the Jap out for more coffee

prepared to go upstairs.

Never had the thought of her own comfortable bed appealed to her so

much. But, in spite of her weariness, she could not quite resign

herself to take Lizzie’s story as lightly as the detective seemed to.

“If what Lizzie says is true,” she said, taking her candle, “the upper

floors of the house are even less safe than this one.”

“I imagine Lizzie’s account just now is about as reliable as her

previous one as to her age,” Anderson assured her. “I’m certain you

need not worry. Just go on up and get your beauty sleep; I’m sure you

need it.”

On which ambiguous remark Miss Van Gorder took her leave, rather grimly

smiling.

It was after she had gone that Anderson’s glance fell on Brooks,

standing warily in the doorway.

“What are you? The gardener?”

But Brooks was prepared for him.

“Ordinarily I drive a car,” he said. “Just now I’m working on the place

here.”

Anderson was observing him closely, with the eyes of a man ransacking

his memory for a name—a picture. “I’ve seen you somewhere—” he went on

slowly. “And I’ll—place you before long.” There was a little threat in

his shrewd scrutiny. He took a step toward Brooks.

“Not in the portrait gallery at headquarters, are you?”

“Not yet.” Brooks’s voice was resentful. Then he remembered his pose

and his back grew supple, his whole attitude that of the respectful

servant.

“Well, we slip up now and then,” said the detective slowly. Then,

apparently, he gave up his search for the name—the pictured face. But

his manner was still suspicious.

“All right, Brooks,” he said tersely, “if you’re needed in the night,

you’ll be _called!_”

Brooks bowed. “Very well, sir.” He closed the door softly behind him,

glad to have escaped as well as he had.

But that he had not entirely lulled the detective’s watchfulness to

rest was evident as soon as he had gone. Anderson waited a few seconds,

then moved noiselessly over to the hall door—listened—opened it

suddenly—closed it again. Then he proceeded to examine the alcove—the

stairs, where the gleaming eye had wavered like a corpse-candle before

Lizzie’s affrighted vision. He tested the terrace door and bolted it.

How much truth had there been in her story? He could not decide, but he

drew out his revolver nevertheless and gave it a quick inspection to

see if it was in working order. A smile crept over his face—the smile

of a man who has dangerous work to do and does not shrink from the

prospect. He put the revolver back in his pocket and, taking the one

lighted candle remaining, went out by the hall door, as the storm burst

forth in fresh fury and the window-panes of the living-room rattled

before a new reverberation of thunder.

For a moment, in the living-room, except for the thunder, all was

silence. Then the creak of surreptitious footsteps broke the

stillness—light footsteps descending the alcove stairs where the

gleaming eye had passed.

It was Dale slipping out of the house to keep her appointment with

Richard Fleming. She carried a raincoat over her arm and a pair of

rubbers in one hand. Her other hand held a candle. By the terrace door

she paused, unbolted it, glanced out into the streaming night with a

shiver. Then she came into the living-room and sat down to put on her

rubbers.

Hardly had she begun to do so when she started up again. A muffled

knocking sounded at the terrace door. It was ominous and determined,

and in a panic of terror she rose to her feet. If it was the law, come

after Jack, what should she do? Or again, suppose it was the Unknown

who had threatened them with death? Not coherent thoughts these, but

chaotic, bringing panic with them. Almost unconscious of what she was

doing, she reached into the drawer beside her, secured the revolver

there and leveled it at the door.

CHAPTER NINE

A SHOT IN THE DARK

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! She clenched her teeth and

resolved to go through with the plan mapped out in her mind. It might

be a desperate expedient but she had nowhere else to turn!

Fleming shut the terrace door behind him and moved down from the

alcove, trying to shake the rain from his coat.

“Did I frighten you?”

“Oh, Mr. Fleming—yes!” Dale laid her aunt’s revolver down on the table.

Fleming perceived her nervousness and made a gesture of apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I rapped but nobody seemed to hear me, so I used

my key.”

“You’re wet through—I’m sorry,” said Dale with mechanical politeness.

He smiled. “Oh, no.” He stripped off his cap and raincoat and placed

them on a chair, brushing himself off as he did so with finicky little

movements of his hands.

“Reggie Beresford brought me over in his car,” he said. “He’s waiting

down the drive.”

Dale decided not to waste words in the usual commonplaces of social

greeting.

“Mr. Fleming, I’m in dreadful trouble!” she said, facing him squarely,

with a courageous appeal in her eyes.

He made a polite movement. “Oh, I say! That’s too bad.”

She plunged on. “You know the Union Bank closed today.”

He laughed lightly.

“Yes, I know it! I didn’t have anything in it—or any other bank for

that matter,” he admitted ruefully, “but I hate to see the old thing go

to smash.”

Dale wondered which angle was best from which to present her appeal.

“Well, even if you haven’t lost anything in this bank failure, a lot of

your friends have—surely?” she went on.

“I’ll say so!” said Fleming, debonairly. “Beresford is sitting down the

road in his Packard now writhing with pain!”

Dale hesitated; Fleming’s lightness seemed so incorrigible that, for a

moment, she was on the verge of giving her project up entirely. Then,

_Waster or not—he’s the only man who can help us!_ she told herself and

continued.

“Lots of awfully poor people are going to suffer, too,” she said

wistfully.

Fleming chuckled, dismissing the poor with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, well, the poor are always in trouble,” he said with airy

heartlessness. “They specialize in suffering.”

He extracted a monogrammed cigarette from a thin gold case.

“But look here,” he went on, moving closer to Dale, “you didn’t send

for me to discuss this hypothetical poor depositor, did you? Mind if I

smoke?”

“No.” He lit his cigarette and puffed at it with enjoyment while Dale

paused, summoning up her courage. Finally the words came in a rush.

“Mr. Fleming, I’m going to say something rather brutal. Please don’t

mind. I’m merely—desperate! You see, I happen to be engaged to the

cashier, Jack Bailey—”

Fleming whistled. “I _see!_ And he’s beat it!”

Dale blazed with indignation.

“He has not! I’m going to tell you something. He’s here, now, in this

house—” she continued fierily, all her defenses thrown aside. “My aunt

thinks he’s a new gardener. He is here, Mr. Fleming, because he knows

he didn’t take the money, and the only person who could have done it

was—your uncle!”

Dick Fleming dropped his cigarette in a convenient ash tray and crushed

it out there, absently, not seeming to notice whether it scorched his

fingers or not. He rose and took a turn about the room. Then he came

back to Dale.

“That’s a pretty strong indictment to bring against a dead man,” he

said slowly, seriously.

“It’s true!” Dale insisted stubbornly, giving him glance for glance.

Fleming nodded. “All right.”

He smiled—a smile that Dale didn’t like.

“Suppose it’s true—where do I come in?” he said. “You don’t think I

know where the money is?”

“No,” admitted Dale, “but I think you might help to find it.”

She went swiftly over to the hall door and listened tensely for an

instant. Then she came back to Fleming.

“If anybody comes in—you’ve just come to get something of yours,” she

said in a low voice. He nodded understandingly. She dropped her voice

still lower.

“Do you know anything about a Hidden Room in this house?” she asked.

Dick Fleming stared at her for a moment. Then he burst into laughter.

“A Hidden Room—that’s rich!” he said, still laughing. “Never heard of

it! Now, let me get this straight. The idea is—a Hidden Room—and the

money is in it—is that it?”

Dale nodded a “Yes.”

“The architect who built this house told Jack Bailey that he had built

a Hidden Room in it,” she persisted.

For a moment Dick Fleming stared at her as if he could not believe his

ears. Then, slowly, his expression changed. Beneath the well-fed,

debonair mask of the clubman about town, other lines appeared—lines of

avarice and calculation—wolf-marks, betokening the craft and petty

ruthlessness of the small soul within the gentlemanly shell. His eyes

took on a shifty, uncertain stare—they no longer looked at Dale—their

gaze seemed turned inward, beholding a visioned treasure, a glittering

pile of gold. And yet, the change in his look was not so pronounced as

to give Dale pause—she felt a vague uneasiness steal over her, true—but

it would have taken a shrewd and long-experienced woman of the world to

read the secret behind Fleming’s eyes at first glance—and Dale, for all

her courage and common sense, was a young and headstrong girl.

She watched him, puzzled, wondering why he made no comment on her last

statement.

“Do you know where there are any blue-prints of the house?” she asked

at last.

An odd light glittered in Fleming’s eyes for a moment. Then it

vanished—he held himself in check—the casual idler again.

“Blue-prints?” He seemed to think it over. “Why—there may be some. Have

you looked in the old secretary in the library? My uncle used to keep

all sorts of papers there,” he said with apparent helpfulness.

“Why, don’t you remember—you locked it when we took the house.”

“So I did.” Fleming took out his key ring, selected a key. “Suppose you

go and look,” he said. “Don’t you think I’d better stay here?”

“Oh, _yes_—” said Dale, blinded to everything else by the rising hope

in her heart. “Oh, I can hardly thank you enough!” and before he could

even reply, she had taken the key and was hurrying toward the hall

door.

He watched her leave the room, a bleak smile on his face. As soon as

she had closed the door behind her, his languor dropped from him. He

became a hound—a ferret—questing for its prey. He ran lightly over to

the bookcase by the hall door—a moment’s inspection—he shook his head.

Perhaps the other bookcase near the French windows—no—it wasn’t there.

Ah, the bookcase over the fireplace! He remembered now! He made for it,

hastily swept the books from the top shelf, reached groping fingers

into the space behind the second row of books. There! A dusty roll of

three blue-prints! He unrolled them hurriedly and tried to make out the

white tracings by the light of the fire—no—better take them over to the

candle on the table.

He peered at them hungrily in the little spot of light thrown by the

candle. The first one—no—nor the second—but the third—the bottom

one—good heavens! He took in the significance of the blurred white

lines with greedy eyes, his lips opening in a silent exclamation of

triumph. Then he pondered for an instant, the blue-print itself—was an

awkward size—bulky—good, he had it! He carefully tore a small portion

from the third blue-print and was about to stuff it in the inside

pocket of his dinner jacket when Dale, returning, caught him before he

had time to conceal his find. She took in the situation at once.

“Oh, you found it!” she said in tones of rejoicing, giving him back the

key to the secretary. Then, as he still made no move to transfer the

scrap of blue paper to her, “Please let me have it, Mr. Fleming. I

_know_ that’s it.”

Dick Fleming’s lips set in a thin line. “Just a moment,” he said,

putting the table between them with a swift movement. Once more he

stole a glance at the scrap of paper in his hand by the flickering

light of the candle. Then he faced Dale boldly.

“Do you suppose, if that money is actually here, that I can simply turn

this over to you and let you give it to Bailey?” he said. “Every man

has his price. How do I know that Bailey’s isn’t a million dollars?”

Dale felt as if he had dashed cold water in her face. “What do you mean

to do with it then?” she said.

Fleming turned the blue-print over in his hand.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What is it you want me to do?”

But by now Dale’s vague distrust in him had grown very definite.

“Aren’t you going to give it to me?”

He put her off. “I’ll have to think about that.” He looked at the

blue-print again. “So the missing cashier is in this house posing as a

gardener?” he said with a sneer in his tones.

Dale’s temper was rising.

“If you won’t give it to me—there’s a detective in this house,” she

said, with a stamp of her foot. She made a movement as if to call

Anderson—then, remembering Jack, turned back to Fleming.

“Give it to the detective and let him search,” she pleaded.

“A detective?” said Fleming startled. “What’s a detective doing here?”

“People have been trying to break in.”

“What people?”

“I don’t know.”

Fleming stared out beyond Dale, into the night.

“Then it _is_ here,” he muttered to himself.

Behind his back—was it a gust of air that moved them?—the double doors

of the alcove swung open just a crack. Was a listener crouched behind

those doors—or was it only a trick of carpentry—a gesture of chance?

The mask of the clubman dropped from Fleming completely. His lips drew

back from his teeth in the snarl of a predatory animal that clings to

its prey at the cost of life or death.

Before Dale could stop him, he picked up the discarded blue-prints and

threw them on the fire, retaining only the precious scrap in his hand.

The roll blackened and burst into flame. He watched it, smiling.

“I’m not going to give this to any detective,” he said quietly, tapping

the piece of paper in his hand.

Dale’s heart pounded sickeningly but she kept her courage up.

“What do you mean?” she said fiercely. “What are you going to do?”

He faced her across the fireplace, his airy manner coming back to him

just enough to add an additional touch of the sinister to the cold

self-revelation of his words.

“Let us suppose a few things, Miss Ogden,” he said. “Suppose _my_ price

is a million dollars. Suppose I need money very badly and my uncle has

left me a house containing that amount in cash. Suppose I choose to

consider that that money is mine—then it wouldn’t be hard to suppose,

would it, that I’d make a pretty sincere attempt to get away with it?”

Dale summoned all her fortitude.

“If you go out of this room with that paper I’ll scream for help!” she

said defiantly.

Fleming made a little mock-bow of courtesy. He smiled.

“To carry on our little game of supposing,” he said easily, “suppose

there is a detective in this house—and that, if I were cornered, I

should tell him where to lay his hands on _Jack Bailey_. Do you suppose

you would scream?”

Dale’s hands dropped, powerless, at her sides. If only she hadn’t told

him—too late!—she was helpless. She could not call the detective

without ruining Jack—and yet, if Fleming escaped with the money—how

could Jack ever prove his innocence?

Fleming watched her for an instant, smiling. Then, seeing she made no

move, he darted hastily toward the double doors of the alcove, flung

them open, seemed about to dash up the alcove stairs. The sight of him

escaping with the only existing clue to the hidden room galvanized Dale

into action. She followed him, hurriedly snatching up Miss Cornelia’s

revolver from the table as she did so, in a last gesture of

desperation.

“No! No! Give it to me! Give it to me!” and she sprang after him,

clutching the revolver. He waited for her on the bottom step of the

stairs, the slight smile still on his face.

Panting breaths in the darkness of the alcove—a short, furious

scuffle—he had wrested the revolver away from her, but in doing so had

unguarded the precious blue-print—she snatched at it desperately,

tearing most of it away, leaving only a corner in his hand. He

swore—tried to get it back—she jerked away.

Then suddenly a bright shaft of light split the darkness of the alcove

stairs like a sword, a spot of brilliance centered on Fleming’s face

like the glare of a flashlight focused from above by an invisible hand.

For an instant it revealed him—his features distorted with fury—about

to rush down the stairs again and attack the trembling girl at their

foot.

A single shot rang out. For a second, the fury on Fleming’s face seemed

to change to a strange look of bewilderment and surprise.

Then the shaft of light was extinguished as suddenly as the snuffing of

a candle, and he crumpled forward to the foot of the stairs—struck—lay

on his face in the darkness, just inside the double doors.

Dale gave a little whimpering cry of horror.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she whispered from a dry throat, automatically

stuffing her portion of the precious scrap of blue-print into the bosom

of her dress. She stood frozen, not daring to move, not daring even to

reach down with her hand and touch the body of Fleming to see if he was

dead or alive.

A murmur of excited voices sounded from the hall. The door flew open,

feet stumbled through the darkness—“The noise came from this room!”

that was Anderson’s voice—“Holy Virgin!” that must be Lizzie—

Even as Dale turned to face the assembled household, the house lights,

extinguished since the storm, came on in full brilliance—revealing her

to them, standing beside Fleming’s body with Miss Cornelia’s revolver

between them.

She shuddered, seeing Fleming’s arm flung out awkwardly by his side. No

living man could lie in such a posture.

“I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” she stammered, after a tense silence

that followed the sudden reillumining of the lights. Her eyes wandered

from figure to figure idly, noting unimportant details. Billy was still

in his white coat and his face, impassive as ever, showed not the

slightest surprise. Brooks and Anderson were likewise completely

dressed—but Miss Cornelia had evidently begun to retire for the night

when she had heard the shot—her transformation was askew and she wore a

dressing-gown. As for Lizzie, that worthy shivered in a gaudy wrapper

adorned with incredible orange flowers, with her hair done up in

curlers. Dale saw it all and was never after to forget one single

detail of it.

The detective was beside her now, examining Fleming’s body with

professional thoroughness. At last he rose.

“He’s dead,” he said quietly. A shiver ran through the watching group.

Dale felt a stifling hand constrict about her heart.

There was a pause. Anderson picked up the revolver beside Fleming’s

body and examined it swiftly, careful not to confuse his own

fingerprints with any that might already be on the polished steel. Then

he looked at Dale. “Who is he?” he said bluntly.

Dale fought hysteria for some seconds before she could speak.

“Richard Fleming—somebody shot him!” she managed to whisper at last.

Anderson took a step toward her.

“What do you mean by somebody?” he said.

The world to Dale turned into a crowd of threatening, accusing eyes—a

multitude of shadowy voices, shouting, _Guilty! Guilty! Prove that

you’re innocent—you can’t!_

“I don’t know,” she said wildly. “Somebody on the staircase.”

“Did you see anybody?” Anderson’s voice was as passionless and cold as

a bar of steel.

“No—but there was a light from somewhere—like a pocket-flash—” She

could not go on. She saw Fleming’s face before her—furious at

first—then changing to that strange look of bewildered surprise—she put

her hands over her eyes to shut the vision out.

Lizzie made a welcome interruption.

“I _told_ you I saw a man go up that staircase!” she wailed, jabbing

her forefinger in the direction of the alcove stairs.

Miss Cornelia, now recovered from the first shock of the discovery,

supported her gallantly.

“That’s the only explanation, Mr. Anderson,” she said decidedly.

The detective looked at the stairs—at the terrace door. His eyes made a

circuit of the room and came back to Fleming’s body. “I’ve been all

over the house,” he said. “There’s nobody there.”

A pause followed. Dale found herself helplessly looking toward her

lover for comfort—comfort he could not give without revealing his own

secret.

Eerily, through the tense silence, a sudden tinkling sounded—the sharp,

persistent ringing of a telephone bell.

Miss Cornelia rose to answer it automatically. “The house phone!” she

said. Then she stopped. “But we’re all _here_.”

They looked attach other aghast. It was true. And

yet—somehow—somewhere—one of the other phones on the circuit was

calling the living-room.

Miss Cornelia summoned every ounce of inherited Van Gorder pride she

possessed and went to the phone. She took off the receiver. The ringing

stopped.

“Hello—hello—” she said, while the others stood rigid, listening. Then

she gasped. An expression of wondering horror came over her face.

CHAPTER TEN

THE PHONE CALL FROM NOWHERE

“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.

“Just what did you hear?” he said stolidly.

Miss Cornelia’s voice shook.

“Dreadful groans—and what seemed to be an inarticulate effort to

speak!”

Lizzie drew her gaudy wrapper closer about her shuddering form.

“I’d go somewhere,” she wailed in the voice of a lost soul, “if I only

had somewhere to go!”

Miss Cornelia quelled her with a glare and turned back to the

detective.

“Won’t you send these men to investigate—or go yourself?” she said,

indicating Brooks and Billy. The detective thought swiftly.

“My place is here,” he said. “You two men,” Brooks and Billy moved

forward to take his orders, “take another look through the house—don’t

leave the building—I’ll want you pretty soon.”

Brooks—or Jack Bailey, as we may as well call him through the remainder

of this narrative—started to obey. Then his eye fell on Miss Cornelia’s

revolver which Anderson had taken from beside Fleming’s body and still

held clasped in his hand.

“If you’ll give me that revolver—” he began in an offhand tone, hoping

Anderson would not see through his little ruse. Once wiped clean of

fingerprints, the revolver would not be such telling evidence against

Dale Ogden.

But Anderson was not to be caught napping. “That revolver will stay

where it is,” he said with a grim smile.

Jack Bailey knew better than to try and argue the point, he followed

Billy reluctantly out of the door, giving Dale a surreptitious glance

of encouragement and faith as he did so. The Japanese and he mounted to

the second floor as stealthily as possible, prying into dark corners

and searching unused rooms for any clue that might betray the source of

the startling phone call from nowhere. But Bailey’s heart was not in

the search. His mind kept going back to the figure of Dale—nervous,

shaken, undergoing the terrors of the third degree at Anderson’s hands.

She _couldn’t_ have shot Fleming of course, and yet, unless he and

Billy found something to substantiate her story of how the killing had

happened, it was her own, unsupported word against a damning mass of

circumstantial evidence. He plunged with renewed vigor into his quest.

Back in the living-room, as he had feared, Anderson was subjecting Dale

to a merciless interrogation.

“Now I want the _real_ story!” he began with calculated brutality. “You

lied before!”

“That’s no tone to use! You’ll only terrify her,” cried Miss Cornelia

indignantly. The detective paid no attention, his face had hardened, he

seemed every inch the remorseless sleuthhound of the law. He turned on

Miss Cornelia for a moment.

“Where were you when this happened?” he said.

“Upstairs in my room.” Miss Cornelia’s tones were icy.

“And you?” badgeringly, to Lizzie.

“In _my_ room,” said the latter pertly, “brushing Miss Cornelia’s

hair.”

Anderson broke open the revolver and gave a swift glance at the bullet

chambers.

“One shot has been fired from this revolver!”

Miss Cornelia sprang to her niece’s defense.

“I fired it myself this afternoon,” she said.

The detective regarded her with grudging admiration.

“You’re a quick thinker,” he said with obvious unbelief in his voice.

He put the revolver down on the table.

Miss Cornelia followed up her advantage.

“I demand that you get the coroner here,” she said.

“Doctor Wells is the coroner,” offered Lizzie eagerly. Anderson brushed

their suggestions aside.

“I’m going to ask you some questions!” he said menacingly to Dale.

But Miss Cornelia stuck to her guns. Dale was not going to be bullied

into any sort of confession, true or false, if she could help it—and

from the way that the girl’s eyes returned with fascinated horror to

the ghastly heap on the floor that had been Fleming, she knew that Dale

was on the edge of violent hysteria.

“Do you mind covering that body first?” she asked crisply. The

detective eyed her for a moment in a rather ugly fashion—then grunted

ungraciously and, taking Fleming’s raincoat from the chair, threw it

over the body. Dale’s eyes telegraphed her aunt a silent message of

gratitude.

“Now—shall _I_ telephone for the coroner?” persisted Miss Cornelia. The

detective obviously resented her interference with his methods but he

could not well refuse such a customary request.

“I’ll do it,” he said with a snort, going over to the city telephone.

“What’s his number?”

“He’s not at his office; he’s at the Johnsons’,” murmured Dale.

Miss Cornelia took the telephone from Anderson’s hands.

“I’ll get the Johnsons’, Mr. Anderson,” she said firmly. The detective

seemed about to rebuke her. Then his manner recovered some of its

former suavity. He relinquished the telephone and turned back toward

his prey.

“Now, what was Fleming doing here?” he asked Dale in a gentler voice.

Should she tell him the truth? No—Jack Bailey’s safety was too

inextricably bound up with the whole sinister business. She must lie,

and lie again, while there was any chance of a lie’s being believed.

“I don’t know,” she said weakly, trying to avoid the detective’s eyes.

Anderson took thought.

“Well, I’ll ask that question another way,” he said. “How did he get

into the house?”

Dale brightened—no need for a lie here.

“He had a key.”

“Key to what door?”

“That door over there.” Dale indicated the terrace door of the alcove.

The detective was about to ask another question—then he paused. Miss

Cornelia was talking on the phone.

“Hello—is that Mr. Johnson’s residence? Is Doctor Wells there? No?” Her

expression was puzzled. “Oh—all right—thank you—good night—”

Meanwhile Anderson had been listening—but thinking as well. Dale saw

his sharp glance travel over to the fireplace—rest for a moment, with

an air of discovery, on the fragments of the roll of blue-prints that

remained unburned among ashes—return. She shut her eyes for a moment,

trying tensely to summon every atom of shrewdness she possessed to aid

her.

He was hammering at her with questions again. “When did you take that

revolver out of the table drawer?”

“When I heard him outside on the terrace,” said Dale promptly and

truthfully. “I was frightened.”

Lizzie tiptoed over to Miss Cornelia.

“You wanted a detective!” she said in an ironic whisper. “I hope you’re

happy now you’ve got one!”

Miss Cornelia gave her a look that sent her scuttling back to her

former post by the door. But nevertheless, internally, she felt

thoroughly in accord with Lizzie.

Again Anderson’s questions pounded at the rigid Dale, striving to

pierce her armor of mingled truth and falsehood.

“When Fleming came in, what did he say to you?”

“Just—something about the weather,” said Dale weakly. The whole scene

was, still too horribly vivid before her eyes for her to furnish a more

convincing alibi.

“You didn’t have any quarrel with him?”

Dale hesitated.

“No.”

“He just came in that door—said something about the weather—and was

shot from that staircase. Is that it?” said the detective in tones of

utter incredulity.

Dale hesitated again. Thus baldly put, her story seemed too flimsy for

words; she could not even blame Anderson for disbelieving it. And

yet—what other story could she tell that would not bring ruin on Jack?

Her face whitened. She put her hand on the back of a chair for support.

“Yes—that’s it,” she said at last, and swayed where she stood.

Again Miss Cornelia tried to come to the rescue. “Are all these

questions necessary?” she queried sharply. “You can’t for a moment

believe that Miss Ogden shot that man!” But by now, though she did not

show it, she too began to realize the strength of the appalling net of

circumstances that drew with each minute tighter around the unhappy

girl. Dale gratefully seized the momentary respite and sank into a

chair. The detective looked at her.

“I think she knows more than she’s telling. She’s concealing

something!” he said with deadly intentness. “The nephew of the

president of the Union Bank—shot in his own house the day the bank has

failed—that’s queer enough—” Now he turned back to Miss Cornelia. “But

when the only person present at his murder is the girl who’s engaged to

the guilty cashier,” he continued, watching Miss Cornelia’s face as the

full force of his words sank into her mind, “I want to know more about

it!”

He stopped. His right hand moved idly over the edge of the table—halted

beside an ash tray—closed upon something.

Miss Cornelia rose.

“Is that true, Dale?” she said sorrowfully.

Dale nodded. “Yes.” She could not trust herself to explain at greater

length.

Then Miss Cornelia made one of the most magnificent gestures of her

life.

“Well, even if it is—what has _that_ got to do with it?” she said,

turning upon Anderson fiercely, all her protective instinct for those

whom she loved aroused.

Anderson seemed somewhat impressed by the fierceness of her query. When

he went on it was with less harshness in his manner.

“I’m not accusing this girl,” he said more gently. “But behind every

crime there is a motive. When we’ve found the motive for _this_ crime,

we’ll have found the criminal.”

Unobserved, Dale’s hand instinctively went to her bosom. There it

lay—the motive—the precious fragment of blue-print which she had torn

from Fleming’s grasp but an instant before he was shot down. Once

Anderson found it in her possession the case was closed, the evidence

against her overwhelming. She could not destroy it—it was the only clue

to the Hidden Room and the truth that might clear Jack Bailey. But,

somehow, she must hide it—get it out of her hands—before Anderson’s

third-degree methods broke her down or he insisted on a search of her

person. Her eyes roved wildly about the room, looking for a hiding

place.

The rain of Anderson’s questions began anew.

“What papers did Fleming burn in that grate?” he asked abruptly,

turning back to Dale.

“Papers!” she faltered.

“Papers! The ashes are still there.”

Miss Cornelia made an unavailing interruption.

“Miss Ogden has said he didn’t come into this room.”

The detective smiled.

“I hold in my hand proof that he was in this room for some time,” he

said coldly, displaying the half-burned cigarette he had taken from the

ash tray a moment before.

“His cigarette—with his monogram on it.” He put the fragment of tobacco

and paper carefully away in an envelope and marched over to the

fireplace. There he rummaged among the ashes for a moment, like a dog

uncovering a bone. He returned to the center of the room with a

fragment of blackened blue paper fluttering between his fingers.

“A fragment of what is technically known as a blue-print,” he

announced. “What were you and Richard Fleming doing with a blue-print?”

His eyes bored into Dale’s.

Dale hesitated—shut her lips.

“Now think it over!” he warned. “The truth will come out, sooner or

later! Better be frank _now!_”

_If he only knew how I_ wanted _to be—he wouldn’t be so cruel_, thought

Dale wearily. _But I can’t—I can’t!_ Then her heart gave a throb of

relief. Jack had come back into the room—Jack and Billy—Jack would

protect her! But even as she thought of this her heart sank again.

Protect her, indeed! Poor Jack! He would find it hard enough to protect

himself if once this terrible man with the cold smile and steely eyes

started questioning him. She looked up anxiously.

Bailey made his report breathlessly.

“Nothing in the house, sir.”

Billy’s impassive lips confirmed him.

“We go all over house—nobody!”

Nobody—nobody in the house! And yet—the mysterious ringing of the

phone—the groans Miss Cornelia had heard! Were old wives’ tales and

witches’ fables true after all? Did a power—merciless—evil—exists

outside the barriers of the flesh—blasting that trembling flesh with a

cold breath from beyond the portals of the grave? There seemed to be no

other explanation.

“You men stay here!” said the detective. “I want to ask you some

questions.” He doggedly returned to his third-degreeing of Dale.

“Now what about this blue-print?” he queried sharply.

Dale stiffened in her chair. Her lies had failed. Now she would tell a

portion of the truth, as much of it as she could without menacing Jack.

“I’ll tell you just what happened,” she began. “I sent for Richard

Fleming—and when he came, I asked him if he knew where there were any

blue-prints of the house.”

The detective pounced eagerly upon her admission.

“_Why_ did you want blue-prints?” he thundered.

“Because,” Dale took a long breath, “I believe old Mr. Fleming took the

money himself from the Union Bank and hid it here.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

Dale’s jaw set. “I won’t tell you.”

“What had the blue-prints to do with it?”

She could think of no plausible explanation but the true one.

“Because I’d heard there was a Hidden Room in this house.”

The detective leaned forward intently. “Did you locate that room?”

Dale hesitated. “No.”

“Then why did you burn the blue-prints?”

Dale’s nerve was crumbling—breaking—under the repeated, monotonous

impact of his questions.

“_He_ burned them!” she cried wildly. “I don’t _know_ why!”

The detective paused an instant, then returned to a previous query.

“Then you _didn’t_ locate this Hidden Room?”

Dale’s lips formed a pale “No.”

“Did he?” went on Anderson inexorably.

Dale stared at him, dully—the breaking point had come. Another

question—another—and she would no longer be able to control herself.

She would sob out the truth hysterically—that Brooks, the gardener, was

Jack Bailey, the missing cashier—that the scrap of blue-print hidden in

the bosom of her dress might unravel the secret of the Hidden

Room—that—

But just as she felt herself, sucked of strength, beginning to slide

toward a black, tingling pit of merciful oblivion, Miss Cornelia

provided a diversion.

“What’s that?” she said in a startled voice.

The detective turned away from his quarry for an instant.

“What’s what?”

“I heard something,” averred Miss Cornelia, staring toward the French

windows.

All eyes followed the direction of her stare. There was an instant of

silence.

Then, suddenly, traveling swiftly from right to left across the shades

of the French windows, there appeared a glowing circle of brilliant

white light. Inside the circle was a black, distorted shadow—a shadow

like the shadow of a gigantic black Bat! It was there—then a second

later, it was gone!

“Oh, my God!” wailed Lizzie from her corner. “It’s the Bat—that’s his

sign!”

Jack Bailey made a dash for the terrace door. But Miss Cornelia halted

him peremptorily.

“Wait, Brooks!” She turned to the detective. “Mr. Anderson, you are

familiar with the sign of the Bat. Did that look like it?”

The detective seemed both puzzled and disturbed. “Well, it looked like

the shadow of a bat. I’ll say that for it,” he said finally.

On the heels of his words the front door bell began to ring. All turned

in the direction of the hall.

“I’ll answer that!” said Jack Bailey eagerly.

Miss Cornelia gave him the key to the front door.

“Don’t admit anyone till you know who it is,” she said. Bailey nodded

and disappeared into the hall. The others waited tensely. Miss

Cornelia’s hand crept toward the revolver lying on the table where

Anderson had put it down.

There was the click of an opening door, the noise of a little

scuffle—then men’s voices raised in an angry dispute. “What do I know

about a flashlight?” cried an irritated voice. “I haven’t got a

pocket-flash—take your hands off me!” Bailey’s voice answered the other

voice, grim, threatening. The scuffle resumed.

Then Doctor Wells burst suddenly into the room, closely followed by

Bailey. The Doctor’s tie was askew—he looked ruffled and enraged.

Bailey followed him vigilantly, seeming not quite sure whether to allow

him to enter or not.

“My dear Miss Van Gorder,” began the Doctor in tones of high dudgeon,

“won’t you instruct your servants that even if I do make a late call, I

am not to be received with violence?”

“I asked you if you had a pocket-flash about you!” answered Bailey

indignantly. “If you call a question like that violence—” He seemed

about to restrain the Doctor by physical force.

Miss Cornelia quelled the teapot-tempest.

“It’s all right, Brooks,” she said, taking the front door key from his

hand and putting it back on the table. She turned to Doctor Wells.

“You see, Doctor Wells,” she explained, “just a moment before you rang

the doorbell a circle of white light was thrown on those window

shades.”

The Doctor laughed with a certain relief.

“Why, that was probably the searchlight from my car!” he said. “I

noticed as I drove up that it fell directly on that window.”

His explanation seemed to satisfy all present but Lizzie. She regarded

him with a deep suspicion. _He may be a lawyer, a merchant, a_ DOCTOR,

she chanted ominously to herself.

Miss Cornelia, too, was not entirely at ease.

“In the center of this ring of light,” she proceeded, her eyes on the

Doctor’s calm countenance, “was an almost perfect silhouette of a bat.”

“A bat!” The Doctor seemed at sea. “Ah, I see—the symbol of the

criminal of that name.” He laughed again.

“I think I can explain what you saw. Quite often my headlights collect

insects at night and a large moth, spread on the glass, would give

precisely the effect you speak of. Just to satisfy you, I’ll go out and

take a look.”

He turned to do so. Then he caught sight of the raincoat-covered huddle

on the floor.

“Why—” he said in a voice that mingled astonishment with horror. He

paused. His glance slowly traversed the circle of silent faces.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BILLY PRACTICES JIU-JITSU

“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

dead, blank mask. Till a moment ago, even at the height of his

irritation with Bailey, he had been blithe and offhand—a man who seemed

comparatively young for his years. Now Age seemed to fall upon him,

suddenly, like a gray, clinging dust—he looked stricken and feeble

under the impact of this unexpected shock.

“Shot and killed from that stairway,” he repeated dully. He rose from

his knees and glanced at the fatal stairs.

“What was Richard Fleming doing in this house at this hour?” he said.

He spoke to Miss Cornelia but Anderson answered the question.

“That’s what _I’m_ trying to find out,” he said with a saturnine smile.

The Doctor gave him a look of astonished inquiry. Miss Cornelia

remembered her manners.

“Doctor, this is Mr. Anderson.”

“Headquarters,” said Anderson tersely, shaking hands.

It was Lizzie’s turn to play her part in the tangled game of mutual

suspicion that by now made each member of the party at Cedarcrest watch

every other member with nervous distrust. She crossed to her mistress

on tiptoe.

“Don’t you let him fool you with any of that moth business!” she said

in a thrilling whisper, jerking her thumb in the direction of the

Doctor. “He’s the Bat.”

Ordinarily Miss Cornelia would have dismissed her words with a smile.

But by now her brain felt as if it had begun to revolve like a pinwheel

in her efforts to fathom the uncanny mystery of the various events of

the night.

She addressed Doctor Wells.

“I didn’t tell you, Doctor—I sent for a detective this afternoon.”

Then, with mounting suspicion, “You happened in very opportunely!”

“After I left the Johnsons’ I felt very uneasy,” he explained. “I

determined to make one more effort to get you away from this house. As

this shows—my fears were justified!”

He shook his head sadly. Miss Cornelia sat down. His last words had

given her food for thought. She wanted to mull them over for a moment.

The Doctor removed muffler and topcoat—stuffed the former in his

topcoat pocket and threw the latter on the settee. He took out his

handkerchief and began to mop his face, as if to wipe away some strain

of mental excitement under which he was laboring. His breath came

quickly—the muscles of his jaw stood out.

“Died instantly, I suppose?” he said, looking over at the body. “Didn’t

have time to say anything?”

“Ask the young lady,” said Anderson, with a jerk of his head. “She was

here when it happened.”

The Doctor gave Dale a feverish glance of inquiry.

“He just fell over,” said the latter pitifully. Her answer seemed to

relieve the Doctor of some unseen weight on his mind. He drew a long

breath and turned back toward Fleming’s body with comparative calm.

“Poor Dick has proved my case for me better than I expected,” he said,

regarding the still, unbreathing heap beneath the raincoat. He swerved

toward the detective.

“Mr. Anderson,” he said with dignified pleading, “I ask you to use your

influence, to see that these two ladies find some safer spot than this

for the night.”

Lizzie bounced up from her chair, instanter.

“_Two?_” she wailed. “If you know any safe spot, lead me to it!”

The Doctor overlooked her sudden eruption into the scene. He wandered

back again toward the huddle under the raincoat, as if still unable to

believe that it was—or rather had been—Richard Fleming.

Miss Cornelia spoke suddenly in a low voice, without moving a muscle of

her body.

“I have a strange feeling that I’m being watched by unfriendly eyes,”

she said.

Lizzie clutched at her across the table.

“I wish the lights would go out again!” she pattered. “No, I don’t

neither!” as Miss Cornelia gave the clutching hand a nervous little

slap.

During the little interlude of comedy, Billy, the Japanese, unwatched

by the others, had stolen to the French windows, pulled aside a blind,

looked out. When he turned back to the room his face had lost a portion

of its Oriental calm—there was suspicion in his eyes. Softly, under

cover of pretending to arrange the tray of food that lay untouched on

the table, he possessed himself of the key to the front door,

unperceived by the rest, and slipped out of the room like a ghost.

Meanwhile the detective confronted Doctor Wells.

“You say, Doctor, that you came back to take these women away from the

house. Why?”

The Doctor gave him a dignified stare.

“Miss Van Gorder has already explained.”

Miss Cornelia elucidated. “Mr. Anderson has already formed a theory of

the crime,” she said with a trace of sarcasm in her tones.

The detective turned on her quickly. “I haven’t said that.” He started.

It had come again—tinkling—persistent.—the phone call from nowhere—the

ringing of the bell of the house telephone!

“The house telephone—again!” breathed Dale. Miss Cornelia made a

movement to answer the tinkling, inexplicable bell. But Anderson was

before her.

“I’ll answer that!” he barked. He sprang to the phone.

“Hello—hello—”

All eyes were bent on him nervously—the Doctor’s face, in particular,

seemed a very study in fear and amazement. He clutched the back of a

chair to support himself, his hand was the trembling hand of a sick,

old man.

“Hello—hello—” Anderson swore impatiently. He hung up the phone.

“There’s nobody there!”

Again, a chill breath from another world than ours seemed to brush

across the faces of the little group in the living-room. Dale,

sensitive, impressionable, felt a cold, uncanny prickling at the roots

of her hair.

A light came into Anderson’s eyes. “Where’s that Jap?” he almost

shouted.

“He just went out,” said Miss Cornelia. The cold fear, the fear of the

unearthly, subsided from around Dale’s heart, leaving her shaken but

more at peace.

The detective turned swiftly to the Doctor, as if to put his case

before the eyes of an unprejudiced witness.

“That Jap rang the phone,” he said decisively. “Miss Van Gorder

believes that this murder is the culmination of the series of

mysterious happenings that caused her to send for me. I do not.”

“Then what is the significance of the anonymous letters?” broke in Miss

Cornelia heatedly. “Of the man Lizzie saw going up the stairs, of the

attempt to break into this house—of the ringing of that telephone

bell?”

Anderson replied with one deliberate word.

“Terrorization,” he said.

The Doctor moistened his dry lips in an effort to speak.

“By whom?” he asked.

Anderson’s voice was an icicle.

“I imagine by Miss Van Gorder’s servants. By that woman there—” he

pointed at Lizzie, who rose indignantly to deny the charge. But he gave

her no time for denial. He rushed on, “—who probably writes the

letters,” he continued. “By the gardener—” his pointing finger found

Bailey “—who may have been the man Lizzie saw slipping up the stairs.

By the Jap, who goes out and rings the telephone,” he concluded

triumphantly.

Miss Cornelia seemed unimpressed by his fervor.

“With what object?” she queried smoothly.

“That’s what I’m going to find out!” There was determination in

Anderson’s reply.

Miss Cornelia sniffed. “Absurd! The butler was in this room when the

telephone rang for the first time.”

The thrust pierced Anderson’s armor. For once he seemed at a loss. Here

was something he had omitted from his calculations. But he did not give

up. He was about to retort when—crash! thud!—the noise of a violent

struggle in the hall outside drew all eyes to the hall door.

An instant later the door slammed open and a disheveled young man in

evening clothes was catapulted into the living-room as if slung there

by a giant’s arm. He tripped and fell to the floor in the center of the

room. Billy stood in the doorway behind him, inscrutable, arms folded,

on his face an expression of mild satisfaction as if he were demurely

pleased with a neat piece of housework, neatly carried out.

The young man picked himself up, brushed off his clothes, sought for

his hat, which had rolled under the table. Then he turned on Billy

furiously.

“Damn you—what do you mean by this?”

“Jiu-jitsu,” said Billy, his yellow face quite untroubled. “Pretty good

stuff. Found on terrace with searchlight,” he added.

“With searchlight?” barked Anderson.

The young man turned to face this new enemy.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be on the terrace with a searchlight?” he

demanded.

The detective moved toward him menacingly.

“Who _are_ you?”

“Who are you?” said the young man with cool impertinence, giving him

stare for stare.

Anderson did not deign to reply, in so many words. Instead he displayed

the police badge which glittered on the inside of the right lapel of

his coat. The young man examined it coolly.

“H’m,” he said. “Very pretty—nice neat design—very chaste!” He took out

a cigarette case and opened it, seemingly entirely unimpressed by both

the badge and Anderson. The detective chafed.

“If you’ve finished admiring my badge,” he said with heavy sarcasm,

“I’d like to know what you were doing on the terrace.”

The young man hesitated—shot an odd, swift glance at Dale who ever

since his abrupt entrance into the room, had been sitting rigid in her

chair with her hands clenched tightly together.

“I’ve had some trouble with my car down the road,” he said finally. He

glanced at Dale again. “I came to ask if I might telephone.”

“Did it require a flashlight to find the house?” Miss Cornelia asked

suspiciously.

“Look here,” the young man blustered, “why are you asking me all these

questions?” He tapped his cigarette case with an irritated air.

Miss Cornelia stepped closer to him.

“Do you mind letting me see that flashlight?” she said.

The young man gave it to her with a little, mocking bow. She turned it

over, examined it, passed it to Anderson, who examined it also, seeming

to devote particular attention to the lens. The young man stood puffing

his cigarette a little nervously while the examination was in progress.

He did not look at Dale again.

Anderson handed back the flashlight to its owner.

“Now—what’s your name?” he said sternly.

“Beresford—Reginald Beresford,” said the young man sulkily. “If you

doubt it I’ve probably got a card somewhere—” He began to search

through his pockets.

“What’s your business?” went on the detective.

“What’s my business here?” queried the young man, obviously fencing

with his interrogator.

“No—how do you earn your living?” said Anderson sharply.

“I don’t,” said the young man flippantly. “I may have to begin now, if

that is of any interest to you. As a matter of fact, I’ve studied law

but—”

The one word was enough to start Lizzie off on another trail of

distrust. _He may be a_ LAWYER— she quoted to herself sepulchrally from

the evening newspaper article that had dealt with the mysterious

identity of the Bat.

“And you came here to telephone about your car?” persisted the

detective.

Dale rose from her chair with a hopeless little sigh. “Oh, don’t you

see—he’s trying to protect me,” she said wearily. She turned to the

young man. “It’s no use, Mr. Beresford.”

Beresford’s air of flippancy vanished.

“I see,” he said. He turned to the other, frankly. “Well, the plain

truth is—I didn’t know the situation and I thought I’d play safe for

Miss Ogden’s sake.”

Miss Cornelia moved over to her niece protectingly. She put a hand on

Dale’s shoulder to reassure her. But Dale was quite composed now—she

had gone through so many shocks already that one more or less seemed to

make very little difference to her overwearied nerves. She turned to

Anderson calmly.

“He doesn’t know anything about—this,” she said, indicating Beresford.

“He brought Mr. Fleming here in his car—that’s all.”

Anderson looked to Beresford for confirmation.

“Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Beresford. He started to explain. “I got tired of waiting

and so I—”

The detective broke in curtly.

“All right.”

He took a step toward the alcove.

“Now, Doctor.” He nodded at the huddle beneath the raincoat. Beresford

followed his glance—and saw the ominous heap for the first time.

“What’s that?” he said tensely. No one answered him. The Doctor was

already on his knees beside the body, drawing the raincoat gently

aside. Beresford stared at the shape thus revealed with frightened

eyes. The color left his face.

“That’s not—Dick Fleming—is it?” he said thickly. Anderson slowly

nodded his head. Beresford seemed unable to believe his eyes.

“If you’ve looked over the ground,” said the Doctor in a low voice to

Anderson, “I’ll move the body where we can have a better light.” His

right hand fluttered swiftly over Fleming’s still, clenched

fist—extracted from it a torn corner of paper....

Still Beresford did not seem to be able to take in what had happened.

He took another step toward the body.

“Do you mean to say that Dick Fleming—” he began. Anderson silenced him

with an uplifted hand.

“What have you got there, Doctor?” he said in a still voice.

The Doctor, still on his knees beside the corpse, lifted his head.

“What do you mean?”

“You took something, just then, out of Fleming’s hand,” said the

detective.

“I took nothing out of his hand,” said the Doctor firmly.

Anderson’s manner grew peremptory.

“I warn you not to obstruct the course of justice!” he said forcibly.

“Give it here!”

The Doctor rose slowly, dusting off his knees. His eyes tried to meet

Anderson’s and failed. He produced a torn corner of blue-print.

“Why, it’s only a scrap of paper, nothing at all,” he said evasively.

Anderson looked at him meaningly.

“Scraps of paper are sometimes very important,” said with a side glance

at Dale.

Beresford approached the two angrily.

“Look here!” he burst out, “I’ve got a right to know about this thing.

I brought Fleming over here—and I want to know what happened to him!”

“You don’t have to be a mind reader to know that!” moaned Lizzie,

overcome.

As usual, her comment went unanswered. Beresford persisted in his

questions.

“Who killed him? That’s what _I_ want to know!” he continued, nervously

puffing his cigarette.

“Well, you’re not alone in that,” said Anderson in his grimly humorous

vein.

The Doctor motioned nervously to them both.

“As the coroner—if Mr. Anderson is satisfied—I suggest that the body be

taken where I can make a thorough examination,” he said haltingly.

Once more Anderson bent over the shell that had been Richard Fleming.

He turned the body half-over—let it sink back on its face. For a moment

he glanced at the corner of the blue-print in his hand, then at the

Doctor. Then he stood aside.

“All right,” he said laconically.

So Richard Fleming left the room where he had been struck down so

suddenly and strangely—borne out by Beresford, the Doctor, and Jack

Bailey. The little procession moved as swiftly and softly as

circumstances would permit—Anderson followed its passage with watchful

eyes. Billy went mechanically to pick up the stained rug which the

detective had kicked aside and carried it off after the body. When the

burden and its bearers, with Anderson in the rear, reached the doorway

into the hall, Lizzie shrank before the sight, affrighted, and turned

toward the alcove while Miss Cornelia stared unseeingly out toward the

front windows. So, for perhaps a dozen ticks of time Dale was left

unwatched—and she made the most of her opportunity.

Her fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress—she took out the

precious, dangerous fragment of blue-print that Anderson must not find

in her possession—but where to hide it, before her chance had passed?

Her eyes fell on the bread roll that had fallen from the detective’s

supper tray to the floor when Lizzie had seen the gleaming eye on the

stairs and had lain there unnoticed ever since. She bent over swiftly

and secreted the tantalizing scrap of blue paper in the body of the

roll, smoothing the crust back above it with trembling fingers. Then

she replaced the roll where it had fallen originally and straightened

up just as Billy and the detective returned.

Billy went immediately to the tray, picked it up, and started to go out

again. Then he noticed the roll on the floor, stooped for it, and

replaced it upon the tray. He looked at Miss Cornelia for instructions.

“Take that tray out to the dining-room,” she said mechanically. But

Anderson’s attention had already been drawn to the tiny incident.

“Wait—I’ll look at that tray,” he said briskly. Dale, her heart in her

mouth, watched him examine the knives, the plates, even shake out the

napkin to see that nothing was hidden in its folds. At last he seemed

satisfied.

“All right—take it away,” he commanded. Billy nodded and vanished

toward the dining-room with tray and roll. Dale breathed again.

The sight of the tray had made Miss Cornelia’s thoughts return to

practical affairs.

“Lizzie,” she commanded now, “go out in the kitchen and make some

coffee. I’m sure we all need it,” she sighed.

Lizzie bristled at once.

“Go out in that kitchen alone?”

“Billy’s there,” said Miss Cornelia wearily.

The thought of Billy seemed to bring little solace to Lizzie’s heart.

“That Jap and his jooy-jitsu,” she muttered viciously. “One twist and

I’d be folded up like a pretzel.”

But Miss Cornelia’s manner was imperative, and Lizzie slowly dragged

herself kitchenward, yawning and promising the saints repentance of

every sin she had or had not committed if she were allowed to get there

without something grabbing at her ankles in the dark corner of the

hall.

When the door had shut behind her, Anderson turned to Dale, the corner

of blue-print which he had taken from the Doctor in his hand.

“Now, Miss Ogden,” he said tensely, “I have here a scrap of blue-print

which was in Dick Fleming’s hand when he was killed. I’ll trouble you

for the rest of it, if you please!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I DIDN’T KILL HIM.”

“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 could not tell from

his manner.

“Why do you say that?” she feinted.

“His cap’s there on that table,” said the detective with crushing

terseness. Dale started. She had not remembered the cap—why hadn’t she

burned it, concealed it—as she had concealed the blue-print? She passed

a hand over her forehead wearily.

Miss Cornelia watched her niece.

“It you’re keeping anything back, Dale—tell him,” she said.

“She’s keeping something back all right,” he said. “She’s told part of

the truth, but not all.” He hammered at Dale again. “You and Fleming

located that room by means of a blue-print of the house. He

started—_not_ to go out—but, probably, to go up that staircase. And he

had in his hand the rest of this!” Again he displayed the blank corner

of blue paper.

Dale knew herself cornered at last. The detective’s deductions were too

shrewd; do what she would, she could keep him away from the truth no

longer.

“He was going to take the money and go away with it!” she said rather

pitifully, feeling a certain relief of despair steal over her, now that

she no longer needed to go on lying—lying—involving herself in an

inextricable web of falsehood.

“Dale!” gasped Miss Cornelia, alarmed. But Dale went on, reckless of

consequences to herself, though still warily shielding Jack.

“He changed the minute he heard about it. He was all kindness before

that—but afterward—” She shuddered, closing her eyes. Fleming’s face

rose before her again, furious, distorted with passion and greed—then,

suddenly, quenched of life.

Anderson turned to Miss Cornelia triumphantly.

“She started to find the money—and save Bailey,” he explained, building

up his theory of the crime. “But to do it she had to take Fleming into

her confidence—and he turned yellow. Rather than let him get away with

it, she—” He made an expressive gesture toward his hip pocket.

Dale trembled, feeling herself already in the toils. She had not quite

realized, until now, how damningly plausible such an explanation of

Fleming’s death could sound. It fitted the evidence perfectly—it took

account of every factor but one—the factor left unaccounted for was one

which even she herself could not explain.

“Isn’t that true?” demanded Anderson. Dale already felt the cold clasp

of handcuffs on her slim wrists. What use of denial when every tiny

circumstance was so leagued against her? And yet she must deny.

“I didn’t kill him,” she repeated perplexedly, weakly.

“Why didn’t you call for help? You—you knew I was here.”

Dale hesitated. “I—I couldn’t.” The moment the words were out of her

mouth she knew from his expression that they had only cemented his

growing certainty of her guilt.

“Dale! Be careful what you say!” warned Miss Cornelia agitatedly. Dale

looked dumbly at her aunt. Her answers must seem the height of reckless

folly to Miss Cornelia—oh, if there were only someone who understood!

Anderson resumed his grilling.

“Now I mean to find out two things,” he said, advancing upon Dale.

“_Why_ you did not call for help—and _what_ you have done with that

blue-print.”

“Suppose I could find that piece of blue-print for you?” said Dale

desperately. “Would that establish Jack Bailey’s innocence?”

The detective stared at her keenly for a moment.

“If the money’s there—yes.”

Dale opened her lips to reveal the secret, reckless of what might

follow. As long as Jack was cleared—what matter what happened to

herself? But Miss Cornelia nipped the heroic attempt at self-sacrifice

in the bud.

She put herself between her niece and the detective, shielding Dale

from his eager gaze.

“But her own guilt!” she said in tones of great dignity. “No, Mr.

Anderson, granting that she knows where that paper is—and she has not

said that she does—I shall want more time and much legal advice before

I allow her to turn it over to you.”

All the unconscious note of command that long-inherited wealth and the

pride of a great name can give was in her voice, and the detective, for

the moment, bowed before it, defeated. Perhaps he thought of men who

had been broken from the Force for injudicious arrests, perhaps he

merely bided his time. At any rate, he gave up his grilling of Dale for

the present and turned to question the Doctor and Beresford who had

just returned, with Jack Bailey, from their grim task of placing

Fleming’s body in a temporary resting place in the library.

“Well, Doctor?” he grunted.