The Bat/Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE BLACKENED BAG
AS it chanced, she did not turn. The hall door opened—the head behind the settee sank down again. Jack Bailey entered, carrying a couple of logs of firewood.
Dale moved toward him as soon as he had shut the door.
"Oh, things have gone awfully wrong, haven't they?" she said with a little break in her voice.
He put his finger to his lips.
"Be careful!" he whispered. He glanced about the room cautiously.
"I don't trust even the furniture in this house to-night!" he said. He took Dale hungrily in his arms and kissed her once, swiftly, on the lips. Then they parted—his voice changed to the formal voice of a servant.
"Miss Van Gorder wishes the fire kept burning," he announced, with a whispered "Play up!" to Dale.
Dale caught his meaning at once.
"Put some logs on the fire, please," she said loudly, for the benefit of any listening ears. Then in an undertone to Bailey, "Jack—I'm nearly distracted!"
Bailey threw his wood on the fire, which received it with appreciative crackles and sputterings. Then again, for a moment, he clasped his sweetheart closely to him.
"Dale, pull yourself together!" he whispered warningly. "We've got a fight ahead of us!"
He released her and turned back toward the fire.
"These old-fashioned fireplaces eat up a lot of wood," he said in casual tones, pretending to arrange the logs with the poker so the fire would draw more cleanly.
But Dale felt that she must settle one point between them before they took up their game of pretense again.
"You know why I sent for Richard Fleming, don't you?" she said, her eyes fixed beseechingly on her lover. The rest of the world might interpret her action as it pleased—she couldn't bear to have Jack misunderstand.
But there was no danger of that. His faith in her was too complete.
"Yes—of course" he said, with a look of gratitude. Then his mind reverted to the ever-present problem before them. "But who in God's name killed him?" he muttered, kneeling before the fire.
"You don't think it was—Billy?" Dale saw Billy's face before her for a moment, calm, impassive. But he was an Oriental—an alien—his face might be just as calm, just as impassive while his hands were still red with blood. She shuddered at the thought.
Bailey considered the matter.
"More likely the man Lizzie saw going upstairs," he said finally. "But—I've been all over the upper floors."
"And—nothing?" breathed Dale.
"Nothing." Bailey's voice had an accent of dour finality. "Dale, do you think that" he began.
Some instinct warned the girl that they were not to continue their conversation uninterrupted. "Be careful!" she breathed, as footsteps sounded in the hall. Bailey nodded and turned back to his pretense of mending the fire. Dale moved away from him slowly.
The door opened and Miss Cornelia entered, her black knitting-bag in her hand, on her face a demure little smile of triumph. She closed the door carefully behind her and began to speak at once.
"Well, Mr. Alopecia—Urticaria—Rubeola—otherwise Bailey!" she said in tones of the greatest satisfaction, addressing herself to Bailey's rigid back. Bailey jumped to his feet mechanically at her mention of his name. He and Dale exchanged one swift and hopeless glance of utter defeat.
"I wish," proceeded Miss Cornelia—obviously enjoying the situation to the full, "I wish you young people would remember that even if hair and teeth have fallen out at sixty—the mind still functions."
She pulled out a cabinet photograph from the depths of her knitting-bag.
"His photograph—sitting on your dresser!" she chided Dale. "Burn it and be quick about it!"
Dale took the photograph but continued to stare at her aunt with incredulous eyes.
"Then—you knew?" she stammered.
Miss Cornelia, the effective little tableau she had planned now accomplished to her most humorous satisfaction, relapsed into a chair.
"My dear child," said the indomitable lady, with a sharp glance at Bailey's bewildered face, "I have employed many gardeners in my time—and never before had one who manicured his finger-nails, wore silk socks, and regarded baldness as a plant instead of a calamity."
An unwilling smile began to break on the faces of both Dale and her lover. The former crossed to the fireplace and threw the damning photograph of Bailey on the flames. She watched it shrivel—curl up—be reduced to ash. She stirred the ashes with a poker till they were well scattered.
Bailey, recovering from the shock of finding that Miss Cornelia's sharp eyes had pierced his disguise without his even suspecting it, now threw himself on her mercy.
"Then you know why I'm here?" he stammered.
"I still have a certain amount of imagination! I may think you are a fool for taking the risk, but I can see what that idiot of a detective might not—that if you had looted the Union Bank you wouldn't be trying to discover if the money is in this house. You would at least presumably know where it is."
The knowledge that he had an ally in this brisk and indomitable spinster lady cheered him greatly. But she did not wait for any comment from him. She turned abruptly to Dale.
"Now I want to ask you something," she said more gravely. "Was there a blue-print, and did you get it from Richard Fleming?"
It was Dale's turn now to bow her head.
"Yes," she confessed.
Bailey felt a thrill of horror run through him. She hadn't told him this!
"Dale!" he said uncomprehendingly, "don't you see where this places you? If you had it, why didn't you give it to Anderson when he asked for it?"
"Because," said Miss Cornelia uncompromisingly, "she had sense enough to see that Mr. Anderson considered that piece of paper the final link in the evidence against her!"
"But she could have no motive!" stammered Bailey, distraught, still failing to grasp the significance of Dale's refusal.
"Couldn't she?" queried Miss Cornelia pityingly. "The detective thinks she could—to save you!"
Now the full light of revelation broke upon Bailey. He took a step back.
"Good God!" he said.
Miss Cornelia would have liked to comment tartly upon the singular lack of intelligence displayed by even the nicest young men in trying circumstances. But there was no time. They might be interrupted at any moment—and before they were, there were things she must find out.
"Where is that paper, now?" she asked Dale sharply;
"Why—the Doctor is getting it for me." Dale seemed puzzled by the intensity of her aunt's manner.
"What?" almost shouted Miss Cornelia. Dale explained.
"It was on the tray Billy took out," she said, still wondering why so simple an answer should disturb Miss Cornelia so greatly.
"Then I'm afraid everything's over," Miss Cornelia said despairingly, and made her first gesture of defeat. She turned away. Dale followed her, still unable to fathom her course of reasoning.
"I didn't know what else to do," she said rather plaintively, wondering if again, as with Fleming, she had misplaced her confidence at a moment critical for them all.
But Miss Cornelia seemed to have no great patience with her dejection.
"One of two things will happen now," she said, with acrid logic. "Either the Doctor's an honest man—in which case, as coroner, he will hand that paper to the detective" Dale gasped. "Or he is not an honest man," went on Miss Cornelia, "and he will keep it for himself. I don't think he's an honest man."
The frank expression of her distrust seemed to calm her a little. She resumed her interrogation of Dale more gently.
"Now, let's be clear about this. Had Richard Fleming ascertained that there was a concealed room in this house?"
"He was starting up to it!" said Dale in the voice of a ghost, remembering.
"Just what did you tell him?"
"That I believed there was a Hidden Room in the house—and that the money from the Union Bank might be in it."
Again, for the millionth time, indeed, it seemed to her, she reviewed the circumstances of the crime.
"Could anyone have overheard?" asked Miss Cornelia.
The question had rung in Dale's ears ever since she had come to her senses after the firing of the shot and seen Fleming's body stark on the floor of the alcove.
"I don't know," she said. "We were very cautious."
"You don't know where this room is?"
"No, I never saw the print. Upstairs somewhere, for he"
"Upstairs! Then the thing to do, if we can get that paper from the Doctor, is to locate the room at once."
Jack Bailey did not recognize the direction where her thoughts were tending. It seemed terrible to him that anyone should devote a thought to the money while Dale was still in danger.
"What does the money matter now?" he broke in somewhat irritably. "We've got to save her!" and his eyes went to Dale.
Miss Cornelia gave him an ineffable look of weary patience.
"The money matters a great deal," she said, sensibly. "Someone was in this house on the same errand as Richard Fleming. After all," she went on with a tinge of irony, "the course of reasoning that you followed, Mr. Bailey, is not necessarily unique."
She rose.
"Somebody else may have suspected that Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank," she said thoughtfully. Her eye fell on the Doctor's professional bag—she seemed to consider it as if it were a strange sort of animal.
"Find the man who followed your course of reasoning," she ended, with a stare at Bailey, "and you have found the murderer."
"With that reasoning you might suspect me!" said the latter a trifle touchily.
Miss Cornelia did not give an inch.
"I have," she said. Dale shot a swift, sympathetic glance at her lover—another less sympathetic and more indignant at her aunt. Miss Cornelia smiled.
"However, I now suspect somebody else," she said. They waited for her to reveal the name of the suspect but she kept her own counsel. By now she had entirely given up confidence if not in the probity at least in the intelligence of all persons, male or female, under the age of sixty-five.
She rang the bell for Billy. But Dale was still worrying over the possible effects of the confidence she had given Doctor Wells.
"Then you think the Doctor may give this paper to Mr. Anderson?" she asked.
"He may or he may not. It is entirely possible that he may elect to search for this room himself! He may even already have gone upstairs!"
She moved quickly to the door and glanced across toward the dining-room, but so far apparently all was safe. The Doctor was at the table making a pretense of drinking a cup of coffee and Billy was in close attendance. That the Doctor already had the paper she was certain; it was the use he intended to make of it that was her concern.
She signaled to the Jap and he came out into the hall. Beresford, she learned, was still in the kitchen with his revolver, waiting for another attempt on the door and the detective was still outside in his search. To Billy she gave her order in a low voice.
"If the Doctor attempts to go upstairs," she said, "let me know at once. Don't seem to be watching. You can be in the pantry. But let me know instantly."
Once back in the living-room the vague outlines of a plan—a test—formed slowly in Miss Cornelia's mind, grew more definite.
"Dale, watch that door and warn me if anyone is coming!" she commanded, indicating the door into the hall. Dale obeyed, marveling silently at her aunt's extraordinary force of character. Most of Miss Cornelia's contemporaries would have called for a quiet ambulance to take them to a sanatorium some hours ere this—but Miss Cornelia was not merely, comparatively speaking, as fresh as a daisy—her manner bore every evidence of a firm intention to play Sherlock Holmes to the mysteries that surrounded her, in spite of Doctors, detectives, dubious noises, or even the Bat himself.
The last of the Van Gorder spinsters turned to Bailey now.
"Get some soot from that fireplace," she ordered. "Be quick. Scrape it off with a knife or a piece of paper. Anything."
Bailey wondered and obeyed. As he was engaged in his grimy task, Miss Cornelia got out a piece of writing paper from a drawer and placed it on the center-table, with a lead pencil beside it.
Bailey emerged from the fireplace with a handful of sooty flakes.
"Is this all right?"
"Yes. Now rub it on the handle of that bag." She indicated the little black bag in which Doctor Wells carried the usual paraphernalia of a country Doctor.
A private suspicion grew in Bailey's mind as to whether Miss Cornelia's fine but eccentric brain had not suffered too sorely under the shocks of the night. But he did not dare disobey. He blackened the handle of the Doctor's bag with painstaking thoroughness and awaited further instructions.
"Somebody's coming!" Dale whispered, warning from her post by the door.
Bailey quickly went to the fireplace and resumed his pretended labors with the fire. Miss Cornelia moved away from the Doctor's bag and spoke for the benefit of whoever might be coming.
"We all need sleep," she began, as if ending a conversation with Dale, "and I think"
The door opened, admitting Billy.
"Doctor just go upstairs," he said, and went out again leaving the door open.
A flash passed across Miss Cornelia's face. She stepped to the door. She called.
"Doctor! Oh, Doctor!"
"Yes?" answered the Doctor's voice from the main staircase. His steps clattered down the stairs—he entered the room. Perhaps he read something in Miss Cornelia's manner that demanded an explanation of his action. At any rate, he forestalled her, just as she was about to question him.
"I was about to look around above," he said. "I don't like to leave if there is the possibility of some assassin still hidden in the house."
"That is very considerate of you. But we are well protected now. And besides, why should this person remain in the house? The murder is done, the police are here."
"True," he said. "I only thought"
But a knocking at the terrace door interrupted him. While the attention of the others was turned in that direction Dale, less cynical than her aunt, made a small plea to him and realized before she had finished with it that the Doctor too had his price.
"Doctor—did you get it?" she repeated, drawing the Doctor aside.
The Doctor gave her a look of apparent bewilderment.
"My dear child," he said softly, "are you sure that you put it there?"
Dale felt as if she had received a blow in the face.
"Why, yes—I" she began in tones of utter dismay. Then she stopped. The Doctor's seeming bewilderment was too pat—too plausible. Of course she was sure—and, though possible, it seemed extremely unlikely that anyone else could have discovered the hiding-place of the blue-print in the few moments that had elapsed between the time when Billy took the tray from the room and the time when the Doctor ostensibly went to find it. A cold wave of distrust swept over her—she turned away from the Doctor silently.
Meanwhile Anderson had entered, slamming the terrace-door behind him.
"I couldn't find anybody!" he said in an irritated voice. "I think that Jap's crazy."
The Doctor began to struggle into his topcoat, avoiding any look at Dale.
"Well," he said, "I believe I've fulfilled all the legal requirements—I think I must be going." He turned toward the door but the detective halted him.
"Doctor," he said, "did you ever hear Courtleigh Fleming mention a Hidden Room in this house?"
If the Doctor started, the movement passed apparently unnoted by Anderson. And his reply was coolly made.
"No—and I knew him rather well."
"You don't think then," persisted the detective, "that such a room and the money in it could be the motive for this crime?"
The Doctor's voice grew a little curt.
"I don't believe Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank, if that's what you mean," he said with nicely calculated emphasis, real or feigned. He crossed over to get his bag and spoke to Miss Cornelia.
"Well, Miss Van Gorder," he said, picking up the bag by its blackened handle, "I can't wish you a comfortable night, but I can wish you a quiet one."
Miss Cornelia watched him silently. As he turned to go, she spoke.
"We're all of us a little upset, naturally," she confessed. "Perhaps you could write a prescription—a sleeping-powder or a bromide of some sort."
"Why, certainly," agreed the Doctor at once. He turned back. Miss Cornelia seemed pleased.
"I hoped you would," she said with a little tremble in her voice such as might easily occur in the voice of a nervous old lady. "Oh, yes—here's paper—and a pencil," as the Doctor fumbled in a pocket.
The Doctor took the sheet of paper she proffered and, using the side of his bag as a pad, began to write out the prescription.
"I don't generally advise these drugs," he said, looking up for a moment. "Still"
He paused. "What time is it?"
Miss Cornelia glanced at the clock. "Half-past eleven."
"Then I'd better bring you the powders myself," decided the Doctor. "The pharmacy closes at eleven. I shall have to make them up myself."
"That seems a lot of trouble."
"Nothing is any trouble if I can be helpful," he assured her, smilingly. And Miss Cornelia also smiled, took the piece of paper from his hand, glanced at it once, as if out of idle curiosity about the unfinished prescription, and then laid it down on the table with a careless little gesture. Dale gave her aunt a glance of dumb entreaty. Miss Cornelia read her wish for another moment alone with the Doctor.
"Dale will let you out, Doctor," said she, giving the girl the key to the front door.
The Doctor approved her watchfulness.
"That's right," he said smilingly. "Keep things locked up. Discretion is the better part of valor!"
But Miss Cornelia failed to agree with him.
"I've been discreet for sixty-five years," she said with a sniff, "and sometimes I think it was a mistake!"
The Doctor laughed easily and followed Dale out of the room, with a nod of farewell to the others in passing. The detective, seeking for some object upon whom to vent the growing irritation which seemed to possess him, made Bailey the scapegoat of his wrath.
"I guess we can do without you for the present!" he said, with an angry frown at the latter. Bailey flushed, then remembered himself, and left the room submissively, with the air of a well-trained servant accepting an unmerited rebuke. The detective turned at once to Miss Cornelia.
"Now I want a few words with you!" he said in a surly voice. The failure of his search of the terrace and grounds seemed to irk him greatly.
"Which means that you mean to do all the talking!" said Miss Cornelia acidly.
"Very well! But first I want to show you something. Will you come here, please, Mr. Anderson?"
She started for the alcove.
"I've examined that staircase," said the detective.
"Not with me!" insisted Miss Cornelia. "I have something to show you."
He followed her unwillingly up the stairs, his whole manner seeming to betray a complete lack of confidence in the theories of all amateur sleuths in general and spinster detectives of sixty-five in particular. Their footsteps died away up the alcove-stairs. The living-room was left vacant for an instant.
Vacant? Only in seeming. The moment that Miss Cornelia and the detective had passed up the stairs, the crouching, mysterious Unknown, behind the settee, began to move. The French window-door opened—a stealthy figure passed through it silently to be swallowed up in the darkness of the terrace.
And poor Lizzie, entering the room at that moment, saw a hand covered with blood reach back and gropingly, horribly, through the broken pane, refasten the lock.
She shrieked madly.