Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood

by The Bat

  “But I tell you—” began the chief in tones of high exasperation. Then he stopped and looked at his protege. There was a silence for a time.

  “Oh, well—” said the chief finally in a hopeless voice. “Go ahead—commit suicide—I’ll send you a ‘Gates Ajar’ and a card, ‘Here lies a damn fool who would have been a great detective if he hadn’t been so pig-headed.’ Go ahead!”

  Anderson rose. “Thank you, sir,” he said in a deep voice. His eyes had light in them now. “I can’t thank you enough, sir.”

  “Don’t try,” grumbled the chief. “If I weren’t as much of a damn fool as you are I wouldn’t let you do it. And if I weren’t so damn old, I’d go after the slippery devil myself and let you sit here and watch me get brought in with an infernal paper bat pinned where my shield ought to be. The Bat’s supernatural, Anderson. You haven’t a chance in the world but it does me good all the same to shake hands with a man with brains and nerve,” and he solemnly wrung Anderson’s hand in an iron grip.

  Anderson smiled. “The cagiest bat flies once too often,” he said. “I’m not promising anything, chief, but—”

  “Maybe,” said the chief. “Now wait a minute, keep your shirt on, you’re not going out bat hunting this minute, you know—”

  “Sir? I thought I—”

  “Well, you’re not,” said the chief decidedly. “I’ve still some little respect for my own intelligence and it tells me to get all the work out of you I can, before you start wild-goose chasing after this—this bat out of hell. The first time he’s heard of again—and it shouldn’t be long from the fast way he works—you’re assigned to the case. That’s understood. Till then, you do what I tell you—and it’ll be work, believe me!”

  “All right, sir,” Anderson laughed and turned to the door. “And—thank you again.”

  He went out. The door closed. The chief remained for some minutes looking at the door and shaking his head. “The best man I’ve had in years—except Wentworth,” he murmured to himself. “And throwing himself away—to be killed by a cold-blooded devil that nothing human can catch—you’re getting old, John Grogan—but, by Judas, you can’t blame him, can you? If you were a man in the prime like him, by Judas, you’d be doing it yourself. And yet it’ll go hard—losing him—”

  He turned back to his desk and his papers. But for some minutes he could not pay attention to the papers. There was a shadow on them—a shadow that blurred the typed letters—the shadow of bat’s wings.

  Chapter Two - The Indomitable Miss Van Gorder

  *

  Miss Cornelis Van Gorder, indomitable spinster, last bearer of a name which had been great in New York when New York was a red-roofed Nieuw Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant a parvenu, sat propped up in bed in the green room of her newly rented country house reading the morning newspaper. Thus seen, with an old soft Paisley shawl tucked in about her thin shoulders and without the stately gray transformation that adorned her on less intimate occasions,—she looked much less formidable and more innocently placid than those could ever have imagined who had only felt the bite of her tart wit at such functions as the state Van Gorder dinners. Patrician to her finger tips, independent to the roots of her hair, she preserved, at sixty-five, a humorous and quenchless curiosity in regard to every side of life, which even the full and crowded years that already lay behind her had not entirely satisfied. She was an Age and an Attitude, but she was more than that; she had grown old without growing dull or losing touch with youth—her face had the delicate strength of a fine cameo and her mild and youthful heart preserved an innocent zest for adventure.

  Wide travel, social leadership, the world of art and books, a dozen charities, an existence rich with diverse experience—all these she had enjoyed energetically and to the full—but she felt, with ingenious vanity, that there were still sides to her character which even these had not brought to light. As a little girl she had hesitated between wishing to be a locomotive engineer or a famous bandit—and when she had found, at seven, that the accident of sex would probably debar her from either occupation, she had resolved fiercely that some time before she died she would show the world in general and the Van Gorder clan in particular that a woman was quite as capable of dangerous exploits as a man. So far her life, while exciting enough at moments, had never actually been dangerous and time was slipping away without giving her an opportunity to prove her hardiness of heart. Whenever she thought of this the fact annoyed her extremely—and she thought of it now.

  She threw down the morning paper disgustedly. Here she was at 65—rich, safe, settled for the summer in a delightful country place with a good cook, excellent servants, beautiful gardens and grounds—everything as respectable and comfortable as—as a limousine! And out in the world people were murdering and robbing each other, floating over Niagara Falls in barrels, rescuing children from burning houses, taming tigers, going to Africa to hunt gorillas, doing all sorts of exciting things! She could not float over Niagara Falls in a barrel; Lizzie Allen, her faithful old maid, would never let her! She could not go to Africa to hunt gorillas; Sally Ogden, her sister, would never let her hear the last of it. She could not even, as she certainly would if the were a man, try and track down this terrible creature, the Bat!

  She sniffed disgruntledly. Things came to her much too easily. Take this very house she was living in. Ten days ago she had decided on the spur of the moment—a decision suddenly crystallized by a weariness of charitable committees and the noise and heat of New York—to take a place in the country for the summer. It was late in the renting season—even the ordinary difficulties of finding a suitable spot would have added some spice to the quest—but this ideal place had practically fallen into her lap, with no trouble or search at all. Courtleigh Fleming, president of the Union Bank, who had built the house on a scale of comfortable magnificence—Courtleigh Fleming had died suddenly in the West when Miss Van Gorder was beginning her house hunting. The day after his death her agent had called her up. Richard Fleming, Courtleigh Fleming’s nephew and heir, was anxious to rent the Fleming house at once. If she made a quick decision it was hers for the summer, at a bargain. Miss Van Gorder had decided at once; she took an innocent pleasure in bargains. The next day the keys were hers—the servants engaged to stay on—within a week she had moved. All very pleasant and easy no doubt—adventure—pooh!

  And yet she could not really say that her move to the country had brought her no adventures at all. There had been—things. Last night the lights had gone off unexpectedly and Billy, the Japanese butler and handy man, had said that he had seen a face at one of the kitchen windows—a face that vanished when he went to the window. Servants’ nonsense, probably, but the servants seemed unusually nervous for people who were used to the country. And Lizzie, of course, had sworn that she had seen a man trying to get up the stairs but Lizzie could grow hysterical over a creaking door. Still—it was queer! And what had that affable Doctor Wells said to her—”I respect your courage, Miss Van Gorder—moving out into the Bat’s home country, you know!” She picked up the paper again. There was a map of the scene of the Bat’s most recent exploits and, yes, three of his recent crimes had been within a twenty-mile radius of this very spot. She thought it over and gave a little shudder of pleasurable fear. Then she dismissed the thought with a shrug. No chance! She might live in a lonely house, two miles from the railroad station, all summer long—and the Bat would never disturb her. Nothing ever did.

  She had skimmed through the paper hurriedly; now a headline caught her eye. Failure of Union Bank—wasn’t that the bank of which Courtleigh Fleming had been president? She settled down to read the article but it was disappointingly brief. The Union Bank had closed its doors; the cashier, a young man named Bailey, was apparently under suspicion; the article mentioned Courtleigh Fleming’s recent and tragic death in the best vein of newspaperese. She laid down the paper and thought—Bailey—Bailey—she seemed to have a vague recollection of hearing about a young man named Bailey who wo
rked in a bank—but she could not remember where or by whom his name had been mentioned.

  Well—it didn’t matter. She had other things to think about. She must ring for Lizzie—get up and dress. The bright morning sun, streaming in through the long window, made lying in bed an old woman’s luxury and she refused to be an old woman.

  “Though the worst old woman I ever knew was a man!” she thought with a satiric twinkle. She was glad Sally’s daughter—young Dale Ogden—was here in the house with her. The companionship of Dale’s bright youth would keep her from getting old-womanish if anything could.

  She smiled, thinking of Dale. Dale was a nice child—her favorite niece. Sally didn’t understand her, of course—but Sally wouldn’t. Sally read magazine articles on the younger generation and its wild ways. “Sally doesn’t remember when she was a younger generation herself,” thought Miss Cornelia. “But I do—and if we didn’t have automobiles, we had buggies—and youth doesn’t change its ways just because it has cut its hair. Before Mr. and Mrs. Ogden left for Europe, Sally had talked to her sister Cornelia … long and weightily, on the problem of Dale.” “Problem of Dale, indeed!” thought Miss Cornelia scornfully. “Dale’s the nicest thing I’ve seen in some time. She’d be ten times happier if Sally wasn’t always trying to marry her off to some young snip with more of what fools call ‘eligibility’ than brains! But there, Cornelia Van Gorder—Sally’s given you your innings by rampaging off to Europe and leaving Dale with you all summer and you’ve a lot less sense than I flatter myself you have, if you can’t give your favorite niece a happy vacation from all her immediate family—and maybe find her someone who’ll make her happy for good and all in the bargain.” Miss Cornelia was an incorrigible matchmaker.

  Nevertheless, she was more concerned with “the problem of Dale” than she would have admitted. Dale, at her age, with her charm and beauty—why, she ought to behave as if she were walking on air, thought her aunt worriedly. “And instead she acts more as if she were walking on pins and needles. She seems to like being here—I know she likes me—I’m pretty sure she’s just as pleased to get a little holiday from Sally and Harry—she amuses herself—she falls in with any plan I want to make, and yet—” And yet Dale was not happy—Miss Cornelia felt sure of it. “It isn’t natural for a girl to seem so lackluster and—and quiet—at her age and she’s nervous, too—as if something were preying on her mind—particularly these last few days. If she were in love with somebody—somebody Sally didn’t approve of particularly—well, that would account for it, of course—but Sally didn’t say anything that would make me think that—or Dale either—though I don’t suppose Dale would, yet, even to me. I haven’t seen so much of her in these last two years—”

  Then Miss Cornelia’s mind seized upon a sentence in a hurried flow of her sister’s last instructions—a sentence that had passed almost unnoticed at the time—something about Dale and “an unfortunate attachment—but of course, Cornelia, dear, she’s so young—and I’m sure it will come to nothing now her father and I have made our attitude plain!”

  “Pshaw—I bet that’s it,” thought Miss Cornelia shrewdly. “Dale’s fallen in love, or thinks she has, with some decent young man without a penny or an ‘eligibility’ to his name—and now she’s unhappy because her parents don’t approve—or because she’s trying to give him up and finds she can’t. Well—” and Miss Cornelia’s tight little gray curls trembled with the vehemence of her decision, “if the young thing ever comes to me for advice I’ll give her a piece of my mind that will surprise her and scandalize Sally Van Gorder Ogden out of her seven senses. Sally thinks nobody’s worth looking at if they didn’t come over to America when our family did—she hasn’t gumption enough to realize that if some people hadn’t come over later, we’d all still be living on crullers and Dutch punch!”

  She was just stretching out her hand to ring for Lizzie when a knock came at the door. She gathered her Paisley shawl more tightly about her shoulders. “Who is it—oh, it’s only you, Lizzie,” as a pleasant Irish face, crowned by an old-fashioned pompadour of graying hair, peeped in at the door. “Good morning, Lizzie—I was just going to ring for you. Has Miss Dale had breakfast—I know it’s shamefully late.”

  “Good morning, Miss Neily,” said Lizzie, “and a lovely morning it is, too—if that was all of it,” she added somewhat tartly as she came into the room with a little silver tray whereupon the morning mail reposed.

  We have not yet described Lizzie Allen—and she deserves description. A fixture in the Van Gorder household since her sixteenth year, she had long ere now attained the dignity of a Tradition. The slip of a colleen fresh from Kerry had grown old with her mistress, until the casual bond between mistress and servant had changed into something deeper; more in keeping with a better-mannered age than ours. One could not imagine Miss Cornelia without a Lizzie to grumble at and cherish—or Lizzie without a Miss Cornelia to baby and scold with the privileged frankness of such old family servitors. The two were at once a contrast and a complement. Fifty years of American ways had not shaken Lizzie’s firm belief in banshees and leprechauns or tamed her wild Irish tongue; fifty years of Lizzie had not altered Miss Cornelia’s attitude of fond exasperation with some of Lizzie’s more startling eccentricities. Together they may have been, as one of the younger Van Gorder cousins had, irreverently put it, “a scream,” but apart each would have felt lost without the other.

  “Now what do you mean—if that were all of it, Lizzie?” queried Miss Cornelia sharply as she took her letters from the tray.

  Lizzie’s face assumed an expression of doleful reticence.

  “It’s not my place to speak,” she said with a grim shake of her head, “but I saw my grandmother last night, God rest her—plain as life she was, the way she looked when they waked her—and if it was my doing we’d be leaving this house this hour!”

  “Cheese-pudding for supper—of course you saw your grandmother!” said Miss Cornelia crisply, slitting open the first of her letters with a paper knife. “Nonsense, Lizzie, I’m not going to be scared away from an ideal country place because you happen to have a bad dream!”

  “Was it a bad dream I saw on the stairs last night when the lights went out and I was looking for the candles?” said Lizzie heatedly. “Was it a bad dream that ran away from me and out the back door, as fast as Paddy’s pig? No, Miss Neily, it was a man—Seven feet tall he was, and eyes that shone in the dark and—”

  “Lizzie Allen!”

  “Well, it’s true for all that,” insisted Lizzie stubbornly. “And why did the lights go out—tell me that, Miss Neily? They never go out in the city.”

  “Well, this isn’t the city,” said Miss Cornelia decisively. “It’s the country, and very nice it is, and we’re staying here all summer. I suppose I may be thankful,” she went on ironically, “that it was only your grandmother you saw last night. It might have been the Bat—and then where would you be this morning?”

  “I’d be stiff and stark with candles at me head and feet,” said Lizzie gloomily. “Oh, Miss Neily, don’t talk of that terrible creature, the Bat!” She came nearer to her mistress. “There’s bats in this house, too—real bats,” she whispered impressively. “I saw one yesterday in the trunk room—the creature! It flew in the window and nearly had the switch off me before I could get away!”

  Miss Cornelia chuckled. “Of course there are bats,” she said. “There are always bats in the country. They’re perfectly harmless,—except to switches.”

  “And the Bat ye were talking of just then—he’s harmless too, I suppose?” said Lizzie with mournful satire. “Oh, Miss Neily, Miss Neily—do let’s go back to the city before he flies away with us all!”

  “Nonsense, Lizzie,” said Miss Cornelia again, but this time less firmly. Her face grew serious. “If I thought for an instant that there was any real possibility of our being in danger here—” she said slowly. “But—oh, look at the map, Lizzie! The Bat has been flying in this district—that’s true
enough—but he hasn’t come within ten miles of us yet!”

  “What’s ten miles to the Bat?” the obdurate Lizzie sighed. “And what of the letter ye had when ye first moved in here? ‘The Fleming house is unhealthy for strangers,’ it said. Leave it while ye can.”

  “Some silly boy or some crank.” Miss Cornelia’s voice was firm. “I never pay any attention to anonymous letters.”

  “And there’s a funny-lookin’ letter this mornin’, down at the bottom of the pile—” persisted Lizzie. “It looked like the other one. I’d half a mind to throw it away before you saw it!”

  “Now, Lizzie, that’s quite enough!” Miss Cornelia had the Van Gorder manner on now. “I don’t care to discuss your ridiculous fears any further. Where is Miss Dale?”

  Lizzie assumed an attitude of prim rebuff, “Miss Dale’s gone into the city, ma’am.”

  “Gone into the city?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She got a telephone call this morning, early—long distance it was. I don’t know who it was called her.”

  “Lizzie! You didn’t listen?”

  “Of course not, Miss Neily.” Lizzie’s face was a study in injured virtue. “Miss Dale took the call in her own room and shut the door.”

  “And you were outside the door?”

  “Where else would I be dustin’ that time in the mornin’?” said Lizzie fiercely. “But it’s yourself knows well enough the doors in this house is thick and not a sound goes past them.”

  “I should hope not,” said Miss Cornelia rebukingly. “But—tell me, Lizzie, did Miss Dale seem—well—this morning?”

  “That she did not,” said Lizzie promptly. “When she came down to breakfast, after the call, she looked like a ghost. I made her the eggs she likes, too—but she wouldn’t eat ‘em.”