“How do we know this fellow right here isn’t _the Bat?_” she asked in a
blood-chilling whisper, nearly stabbing the unfortunate Unknown in the
eye with her thumb as she pointed at him. The Unknown was either too
dazed or too crafty to make any answer. His silence confirmed Lizzie’s
worst suspicions. She fairly hugged the floor and began to pray in a
whisper.
Miss Cornelia re-entered cautiously with her candle, closing the door
gently behind her as she came.
“What did you see?” gasped Dale.
Miss Cornelia smiled broadly.
“I didn’t see anything,” she admitted with the greatest calm. “I had to
get that dratted detective out of the room before I assassinated him.”
“Nobody went through the skylight?” said Dale incredulously.
“They have now,” answered Miss Cornelia with obvious satisfaction. “The
whole outfit of them.”
She stole a glance at the veiled eyes of the Unknown. He was lying
limply back in his chair, as if the excitement had been too much for
him—and yet she could have sworn she had seen him leap to his feet,
like a man in full possession of his faculties, when she had given her
false cry of alarm.
“Then why did you—” began Dale dazedly, unable to fathom her aunt’s
reasons for her trick.
“Because,” interrupted Miss Cornelia decidedly, “that money’s in this
room. If the man who took it out of the safe got away with it, why did
he come back and hide there?”
Her forefinger jabbed at the hidden chamber wherein the masked intruder
had terrified Dale with threats of instant death.
“He got it out of the safe—and that’s as far as he _did_ get with it,”
she persisted inexorably. “There’s a _hat_ behind that safe, a man’s
felt hat!”
So this was the discovery she had hinted of to Anderson before he
rebuffed her proffer of assistance!
“Oh, I wish he’d take his hat and go home!” groaned Lizzie inattentive
to all but her own fears.
Miss Cornelia did not even bother to rebuke her. She crossed behind the
wicker clothes hamper and picked up something from the floor.
“A half-burned candle,” she mused. “Another thing the detective
overlooked.”
She stepped back to the center of the room, looking knowingly from the
candle to the Hidden Room and back again.
“Oh, my God—another one!” shrieked Lizzie as the dark shape of a man
appeared suddenly outside the window, as if materialized from the air.
Miss Cornelia snatched up her revolver from the top of the hamper.
“Don’t shoot—it’s Jack!” came a warning cry from Dale as she recognized
the figure of her lover.
Miss Cornelia laid her revolver down on the hamper again. The vacant
eyes of the Unknown caught the movement.
Bailey swung in through the window, panting a little from his
exertions.
“The man Lizzie saw drop from the skylight undoubtedly got to the roof
from this window,” he said. “It’s quite easy.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account