[Illustration] The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE. THE SHADOW OF THE BAT CHAPTER TWO. THE INDOMITABLE MISS VAN GORDER CHAPTER THREE. PISTOL PRACTICE CHAPTER FOUR. THE STORM GATHERS CHAPTER FIVE. ALOPECIA AND RUBEOLA CHAPTER SIX. DETECTIVE ANDERSON TAKES CHARGE CHAPTER SEVEN. CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS CHAPTER EIGHT. THE GLEAMING EYE CHAPTER NINE. A SHOT IN THE DARK CHAPTER TEN. THE PHONE CALL FROM NOWHERE CHAPTER ELEVEN. BILLY PRACTICES JIU-JITSU CHAPTER TWELVE. “I DIDN’T KILL HIM.” CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE BLACKENED BAG CHAPTER FOURTEEN. HANDCUFFS CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THE SIGN OF THE BAT CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE HIDDEN ROOM CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. ANDERSON MAKES AN ARREST CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE BAT STILL FLIES CHAPTER NINETEEN. MURDER ON MURDER CHAPTER TWENTY. “HE IS—THE BAT!” CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. QUITE A COLLECTION THE BAT CHAPTER ONE THE SHADOW OF THE BAT “You’ve _got_ to get him, boys—get him or bust!” said a tired police chief, pounding a heavy fist on a table. The detectives he bellowed the words at looked at the floor. They had done their best and failed. Failure meant “resignation” for the police chief, return to the hated work of pounding the pavements for them—they knew it, and, knowing it, could summon no gesture of bravado to answer their chief’s. Gunmen, thugs, hi-jackers, loft-robbers, murderers, they could get them all in time—but they could not get the man he wanted. “Get him—to hell with expense—I’ll give you carte blanche—but get him!” said a haggard millionaire in the sedate inner offices of the best private detective firm in the country. The man on the other side of the desk, man hunter extraordinary, old servant of Government and State, sleuthhound without a peer, threw up his hands in a gesture of odd hopelessness. “It isn’t the money, Mr. De Courcy—I’d give every cent I’ve made to get the man you want—but I can’t promise you results—for the first time in my life.” The conversation was ended. “Get him? Huh! I’ll get him, watch my smoke!” It was young ambition speaking in a certain set of rooms in Washington. Three days later young ambition lay in a New York gutter with a bullet in his heart and a look of such horror and surprise on his dead face that even the ambulance-Doctor who found him felt shaken. “We’ve lost the most promising man I’ve had in ten years,” said his chief when the news came in. He swore helplessly, “Damn the luck!” “Get him—get him—get him—_get_ him!” From a thousand sources now the clamor arose—press, police, and public alike crying out for the capture of the master criminal of a century—lost voices hounding a specter down the alleyways of the wind. And still the meshes broke and the quarry slipped away before the hounds were well on the scent—leaving behind a trail of shattered safes and rifled jewel cases—while ever the clamor rose higher to “Get him—get him—get—”