Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (27 page)

"You see," she said, "I, too, have a little imagination!"

An hour or so later in a living-room whose terrors had departed, Miss
Cornelia, her niece, and Jack Bailey were gathered before a roaring
fire. The local police had come and gone; the bodies of Courtleigh
Fleming and his nephew had been removed to the mortuary; Beresford had
returned to his home, though under summons as a material witness; the
Bat, under heavy guard, had gone off under charge of the detective. As
for Doctor Wells, he too was under arrest, and a broken man, though,
considering the fact that Courtleigh Fleming had been throughout the
prime mover in the conspiracy, he might escape with a comparatively
light sentence. In a little while the newspapermen of all the great
journals would be at the door—but for a moment the sorely tried group
at Cedarcrest enjoyed a temporary respite and they made the best of it
while they could.

The fire burned brightly and the lovers, hand in hand, sat before it.
But Miss Cornelia, birdlike and brisk, sat upright on a chair near by
and relived the greatest triumph of her life while she knitted with
automatic precision.

"Knit two, purl two," she would say, and then would wander once more
back to the subject in hand. Out behind the flower garden the ruins of
the garage and her beloved car were still smoldering; a cool night wind
came through the broken windowpane where not so long before the bloody
hand of the injured detective had intruded itself. On the door to the
hall, still fastened as the Bat had left it, was the pathetic little
creature with which the Bat had signed a job—for once, before he had
completed it.

But calmly and dispassionately Miss Cornelia worked out the crossword
puzzle of the evening and announced her results.

"It is all clear," she said. "Of course the Doctor had the blue-print.
And the Bat tried to get it from him. Then when the Doctor had stunned
him and locked him in the billiard room, the Bat still had the key and
unlocked his own handcuffs. After that he had only to get out of a
window and shut us in here."

And again:

"He had probably trailed the real detective all the way from town and
attacked him where Mr. Beresford found the watch."

Once, too, she harkened back to the anonymous letters—

"It must have been a blow to the Doctor and Courtleigh Fleming when
they found me settled in the house!" She smiled grimly. "And when
their letters failed to dislodge me."

But it was the Bat who held her interest; his daring assumption of the
detective's identity, his searching of the house ostensibly for their
safety but in reality for the treasure, and that one moment of
irresolution when he did not shoot the Doctor at the top of the ladder.
And thereafter lost his chance—

It somehow weakened her terrified admiration for him, but she had
nothing but acclaim for the escape he had made from the Hidden Room
itself.

"That took brains," she said. "Cold, hard brains. To dash out of that
room and down the stairs, pull off his mask and pick up a candle, and
then to come calmly back to the trunk room again and accuse the
Doctor—that took real ability. But I dread to think what would have
happened when he asked us all to go out and leave him alone with the
real Anderson!"

It was after two o'clock when she finally sent the young people off to
get some needed sleep but she herself was still bright-eyed and
wide-awake.

When Lizzie came at last to coax and scold her into bed, she was
sitting happily at the table surrounded by divers small articles which
she was handling with an almost childlike zest. A clipping about the
Bat from the evening newspaper; a piece of paper on which was a
well-defined fingerprint; a revolver and a heap of five shells; a small
very dead bat; the anonymous warnings, including the stone in which the
last one had been wrapped; a battered and broken watch, somehow left
behind; a dried and broken dinner roll; and the box of sedative powders
brought by Doctor Wells.

Lizzie came over to the table and surveyed her grimly.

"You see, Lizzie, it's quite a collection. I'm going to take them
and—"

But Lizzie bent over the table and picked up the box of powders.

"No, ma'am," she said with extreme finality. "You are not. You are
going to take these and go to bed."

And Miss Cornelia did.