“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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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