Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (22 page)

As they watched, a rigid little figure of horror backed slowly down the
alcove stairs and into the room—Billy, the Japanese, his Oriental
placidity disturbed at last, incomprehensible terror written in every
line of his face.

"Billy!"

"Billy—what is it?"

The diminutive butler made a pitiful attempt at his usual grin.

"It—nothing," he gasped. The Unknown relapsed in his chair—again the
dazed stranger from nowhere.

Beresford took the Japanese by the shoulders.

"Now see here!" he said sharply. "You've seen something! What was it!"

Billy trembled like a leaf.

"Ghost! Ghost!" he muttered frantically, his face working.

"He's concealing something. Look at him!" Miss Cornelia stared at her
servant.

"No, no!" insisted Billy in an ague of fright. "No, no!"

But Miss Cornelia was sure of it.

"Brooks, close that door!" she said, pointing at the terrace door in
the alcove which still stood ajar after the entrance of the Unknown.

Bailey moved to obey. But just as he reached the alcove the terrace
door slammed shut in his face. At the same moment every light in
Cedarcrest blinked and went out again.

Bailey fumbled for the doorknob in the sudden darkness.

"The door's locked!" he said incredulously. "The key's gone too.
Where's your revolver, Beresford?"

"I dropped it in the alcove when I caught that man," called Beresford,
cursing himself for his carelessness.

The illuminated dial of Bailey's wrist watch flickered in the darkness
as he searched for the revolver—as round, glowing spot of
phosphorescence.

Lizzie screamed. "The eye! The gleaming eye I saw on the stairs!" she
shrieked, pointing at it frenziedly.

"Quick—there's a candle on the table—light it somebody. Never mind
the revolver, I have one!" called Miss Cornelia.

"Righto!" called Beresford cheerily in reply. He found the candle, lit
it—

The party blinked at each other for a moment, still unable quite to
co-ordinate their thoughts.

Bailey rattled the knob of the door into the hall.

"This door's locked, too!" he said with increasing puzzlement. A gasp
went over the group. They were locked in the room while some devilment
was going on in the rest of the house. That they knew. But what it
might be, what form it might take, they had not the remotest idea.
They were too distracted to notice the injured man, now alert in his
chair, or the Doctor's odd attitude of listening, above the rattle and
banging of the storm.

But it was not until Miss Cornelia took the candle and proceeded toward
the hall door to examine it that the full horror of the situation burst
upon them.

Neatly fastened to the white panel of the door, chest high and hardly
more than just dead, was the body of a bat.

Of what happened thereafter no one afterward remembered the details. To
be shut in there at the mercy of one who knew no mercy was intolerable.
It was left for Miss Cornelia to remember her own revolver, lying
unnoticed on the table since the crime earlier in the evening, and to
suggest its use in shattering the lock. Just what they had expected
when the door was finally opened they did not know. But the house was
quiet and in order; no new horror faced them in the hall; their candle
revealed no bloody figure, their ears heard no unearthly sound.

Slowly they began to breathe normally once more. After that they began
to search the house. Since no room was apparently immune from danger,
the men made no protest when the women insisted on accompanying them.
And as time went on and chamber after chamber was discovered empty and
undisturbed, gradually the courage of the party began to rise. Lizzie,
still whimpering, stuck closely to Miss Cornelia's heels, but that
spirited lady began to make small side excursions of her own.

Of the men, only Bailey, Beresford, and the Doctor could really be said
to search at all. Billy had remained below, impassive of face but
rolling of eye; the Unknown, after an attempt to depart with them, had
sunk back weakly into his chair again, and the detective, Anderson, was
still unaccountably missing.

While no one could be said to be grieving over this, still the belief
that somehow, somewhere, he had met the Bat and suffered at his hands
was strong in all of them except the Doctor. As each door was opened
they expected to find him, probably foully murdered; as each door was
closed again they breathed with relief.

And as time went on and the silence and peace remained unbroken, the
conviction grew on them that the Bat had in this manner achieved his
object and departed; had done his work, signed it after his usual
fashion, and gone.

And thus were matters when Miss Cornelia, happening on the attic
staircase with Lizzie at her heels, decided to look about her up there.
And went up.

A few moments later Jack Bailey, seeing a thin glow of candlelight from
the attic above and hearing Lizzie's protesting voice, made his way up
there. He found them in the trunk room, a dusty, dingy apartment lined
with high closets along the walls—the floor littered with an
incongruous assortment of attic objects—two battered trunks, a clothes
hamper, an old sewing machine, a broken-backed kitchen chair, two
dilapidated suitcases and a shabby satchel that might once have been a
woman's dressing case—in one corner a grimy fireplace in which,
obviously, no fire had been lighted for years.

But he also found Miss Cornelia holding her candle to the floor and
staring at something there.

"Candle grease!" she said sharply, staring at a line of white spots by
the window. She stooped and touched the spots with an exploratory
finger.

"Fresh candle grease! Now who do you suppose did that? Do you
remember how Mr. Gillette, in Sherlock Holmes, when he—"

Her voice trailed off. She stooped and followed the trail of the
candle grease away from the window, ingeniously trying to copy the
shrewd, piercing gaze of Mr. Gillette as she remembered him in his most
famous role.

"It leads straight to the fireplace!" she murmured in tones of
Sherlockian gravity. Bailey repressed an involuntary smile. But her
next words gave him genuine food for thought.

She stared at the mantel of the fireplace accusingly. "It's been going
through my mind for the last few minutes that no chimney flue runs up
this side of the house!" she said.

Bailey stared. "Then why the fireplace?"

"That's what I'm going to find out!" said the spinster grimly. She
started to rap the mantel, testing it for secret springs.

"Jack! Jack!" It was Dale's voice, low and cautious, coming from the
landing of the stairs.

Bailey stepped to the door of the trunk room.

"Come in," he called in reply. "And shut the door behind you."

Dale entered, turning the key in the lock behind her.

"Where are the others?"

"They're still searching the house. There's no sign of anybody."

"They haven't found—Mr. Anderson?"

Dale shook her head. "Not yet."

She turned toward her aunt. Miss Cornelia had begun to enjoy herself
once more.

Rapping on the mantelpiece, poking and pressing various corners and
sections of the mantel itself, she remembered all the detective stories
she had ever read and thought, with a sniff of scorn, that she could
better them. There were always sliding panels and hidden drawers in
detective stories and the detective discovered them by rapping just as
she was doing, and listening for a hollow sound in answer. She rapped
on the wall above the mantel—exactly—there was the hollow echo she
wanted.

"Hollow as Lizzie's head!" she said triumphantly. The fireplace was
obviously not what it seemed, there must be a space behind it
unaccounted for in the building plans. Now what was the next step
detectives always took? Oh, yes—they looked for panels; panels that
moved. And when one shoved them away there was a button or something.
She pushed and pressed and finally something did move. It was the
mantelpiece itself, false grate and all, which began to swing out into
the room, revealing behind a dark, hollow cubbyhole, some six feet by
six—the Hidden Room at last!

"Oh, Jack, be careful!" breathed Dale as her lover took Miss Cornelia's
candle and moved toward the dark hiding-place. But her eyes had
already caught the outlines of a tall iron safe in the gloom and in
spite of her fears, her lips formed a wordless cry of victory.

But Jack Bailey said nothing at all. One glance had shown him that the
safe was empty.

The tragic collapse of all their hopes was almost more than they could
bear. Coming on top of the nerve-racking events of the night, it left
them dazed and directionless. It was, of course, Miss Cornelia who
recovered first.

"Even without the money," she said; "the mere presence of this safe
here, hidden away, tells the story. The fact that someone else knew
and got here first cannot alter that."

But she could not cheer them. It was Lizzie who created a diversion.
Lizzie who had bolted into the hall at the first motion of the
mantelpiece outward and who now, with equal precipitation, came bolting
back. She rushed into the room, slamming the door behind her, and
collapsed into a heap of moaning terror at her mistress's feet. At
first she was completely inarticulate, but after a time she muttered
that she had seen "him" and then fell to groaning again.

The same thought was in all their minds, that in some corner of the
upper floor she had come across the body of Anderson. But when Miss
Cornelia finally quieted her and asked this, she shook her head.

"It was the Bat I saw," was her astounding statement. "He dropped
through the skylight out there and ran along the hall. I saw him I
tell you. He went right by me!"

"Nonsense," said Miss Cornelia briskly. "How can you say such a thing?"

But Bailey pushed forward and took Lizzie by the shoulder.

"What did he look like?"

"He hadn't any face. He was all black where his face ought to be."

"Do you mean he wore a mask?"

"Maybe. I don't know."

She collapsed again but when Bailey, followed by Miss Cornelia, made a
move toward the door she broke into frantic wailing.

"Don't go out there!" she shrieked. "He's there I tell you. I'm not
crazy. If you open that door, he'll shoot."

But the door was already open and no shot came. With the departure of
Bailey and Miss Cornelia, and the resulting darkness due to their
taking the candle, Lizzie and Dale were left alone. The girl was faint
with disappointment and strain; she sat huddled on a trunk, saying
nothing, and after a moment or so Lizzie roused to her condition.

"Not feeling sick, are you?" she asked.

"I feel a little queer."

"Who wouldn't in the dark here with that monster loose somewhere near
by?" But she stirred herself and got up. "I'd better get the smelling
salts," she said heavily. "God knows I hate to move, but if there's
one place safer in this house than another, I've yet to find it."

She went out, leaving Dale alone. The trunk room was dark, save that
now and then as the candle appeared and reappeared the doorway was
faintly outlined. On this outline she kept her eyes fixed, by way of
comfort, and thus passed the next few moments. She felt weak and dizzy
and entirely despairing.

Then—the outline was not so clear. She had heard nothing but there
was something in the doorway. It stood there, formless, diabolical,
and then she saw what was happening. It was closing the door.
Afterward she was mercifully not to remember what came next; the figure
was perhaps intent on what was going on outside, or her own movements
may have been as silent as its own. That she got into the mantel-room
and even partially closed it behind her is certain, and that her
description of what followed is fairly accurate is borne out by the
facts as known.

The Bat was working rapidly. She heard his quick, nervous movements;
apparently he had come back for something and secured it, for now he
moved again toward the door. But he was too late; they were returning
that way. She heard him mutter something and quickly turn the key in
the lock. Then he seemed to run toward the window, and for some reason
to recoil from it.

The next instant she realized that he was coming toward the
mantel-room, that he intended to hide in it. There was no doubt in her
mind as to his identity. It was the Bat, and in a moment more he would
be shut in there with her.

She tried to scream and could not, and the next instant, when the Bat
leaped into concealment beside her, she was in a dead faint on the
floor.

Bailey meanwhile had crawled out on the roof and was carefully
searching it. But other things were happening also. A disinterested
observer could have seen very soon why the Bat had abandoned the window
as a means of egress.

Almost before the mantel had swung to behind the archcriminal, the top
of a tall pruning ladder had appeared at the window and by its
quivering showed that someone was climbing up, rung by rung.
Unsuspiciously enough he came on, pausing at the top to flash a light
into the room, and then cautiously swinging a leg over the sill. It
was the Doctor. He gave a low whistle but there was no reply, save
that, had he seen it, the mantel swung out an inch or two. Perhaps he
was never so near death as at that moment but that instant of
irresolution on his part saved him, for by coming into the room he had
taken himself out of range.

Even then he was very close to destruction, for after a brief pause and
a second rather puzzled survey of the room, he started toward the
mantel itself. Only the rattle of the doorknob stopped him, and a call
from outside.