Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (4 page)

Miss Cornelia laughed. "Lizzie—you're unique," she said. "But I'm
glad you didn't give her bonnet a shake—though I've no doubt you
could."

"Humph!" said Lizzie snorting, the fire of battle in her eye. "And is
it any Black Irish from Ulster would play impudence to a Kerrywoman
without getting the flat of a hand in—but that's neither here nor
there. The truth of it is, Miss Neily," her voice grew solemn, "it's
my belief they're scared—both of them—by the haunts and the banshees
here—and that's all."

"If they are they're very silly," said Miss Cornelia practically. "No,
they may have heard of a better place, though it would seem as if when
one pays the present extortionate wages and asks as little as we do
here—but it doesn't matter. If they want to go, they may. Am I
ready, Lizzie?"

"You look like an angel, ma'am," said Lizzie, clasping her hands.

"Well, I feel very little like one," said Miss Cornelia, rising. "As
cook and housemaid may discover before I'm through with them. Send them
into the livingroom, Lizzie, when I've gone down. I'll talk to them
there."

An hour or so later, Miss Cornelia sat in a deep chintz chair in the
comfortable living-room of the Fleming house going through the pile of
letters which Lizzie's news of domestic revolt had prevented her
reading earlier. Cook and housemaid had come and gone—civil enough,
but so obviously determined upon leaving the house at once that Miss
Cornelia had sighed and let them go, though not without caustic
comment. Since then, she had devoted herself to calling up various
employment agencies without entirely satisfactory results. A new cook
and housemaid were promised for the end of the week—but for the next
three days the Japanese butler, Billy, and Lizzie between them would
have to bear the brunt of the service. Oh, yes—and then there's
Dale's gardener, if she gets one, thought Miss, Cornelia. "I wish he
could cook—but I don't suppose gardeners can—and Billy's a treasure.
Still, its inconvenient—now, stop—Cornelia Van Gorder—you were
asking for an adventure only this morning and the moment the littlest
sort of one comes along, you want to crawl out of it."

She had reached the bottom of her pile of letters—these to be thrown
away, these to be answered—ah, here was one she had overlooked
somehow. She took it up. It must be the one Lizzie had wanted to
throw away—she smiled at Lizzie's fears. The address was badly typed,
on cheap paper—she tore the envelope open and drew out a single
unsigned sheet.

If you stay in this house any longer—DEATH. Go back to the city at
once and save your life.

Her fingers trembled a little as she turned the missive over but her
face remained calm. She looked at the envelope—at the postmark—while
her heart thudded uncomfortably for a moment and then resumed its
normal beat. It had come at last—the adventure—and she was not
afraid!

She knew who it was, of course. The Bat! No doubt of it. And
yet—did the Bat ever threaten before he struck? She could not
remember. But it didn't matter. The Bat was unprecedented—unique. At
any rate, Bat or no Bat, she must think out a course of action. The
defection of cook and housemaid left her alone in the house with Lizzie
and Billy—and Dale, of course, if Dale returned. Two old women, a
young girl, and a Japanese butler to face the most dangerous criminal
in America, she thought grimly. And yet—one couldn't be sure. The
threatening letter might be only a joke—a letter from a crank—after
all. Still, she must take precautions; look for aid somewhere. But
where could she look for aid?

She ran over in her mind the new acquaintances she had made since she
moved to the country. There was Doctor Wells, the local physician, who
had joked with her about moving into the Bat's home territory—He
seemed an intelligent man—but she knew him only slightly—she couldn't
call a busy Doctor away from his patients to investigate something
which might only prove to be a mare's-nest. The boys Dale had met at
the country club—"Humph!" she sniffed, "I'd rather trust my gumption
than any of theirs." The logical person to call on, of course, was
Richard Fleming, Courtleigh Fleming's nephew and heir, who had rented
her the house. He lived at the country club—she could probably reach
him now. She was just on the point of doing so when she decided
against it—partly from delicacy, partly from an indefinable feeling
that he would not be of much help. Besides, she thought sturdily, it's
my house now, not his. He didn't guarantee burglar protection in the
lease.

As for the local police—her independence revolted at summoning them.
They would bombard her with ponderous questions and undoubtedly think
she was merely a nervous old spinster. If it was just me, she thought,
I swear I wouldn't say a word to anybody—and if the Bat flew in he
mightn't find it so easy to fly out again, if I am sixty-five and never
shot a burglar in my life! But there's Dale—and Lizzie. I've got to
be fair to them.

For a moment she felt very helpless, very much alone. Then her courage
returned.

"Pshaw, Cornelia, if you have got to get help—get the help you want
and hang the consequences!" she adjured herself. "You've always
hankered to see a first-class detective do his detecting—well, get
one—or decide to do the job yourself. I'll bet you could at that."

She tiptoed to the main door of the living-room and closed it
cautiously, smiling as she did so. Lizzie might be about and Lizzie
would promptly go into hysterics if she got an inkling of her
mistress's present intentions. Then she went to the city telephone and
asked for long distance.

When she had finished her telephoning, she looked at once relieved and
a little naughty—like a demure child who has carried out some piece of
innocent mischief unobserved. "My stars!" she muttered to herself.
"You never can tell what you can do till you try." Then she sat down
again and tried to think of other measures of defense.

Now if I were the Bat, or any criminal, she mused, how would I get into
this house? Well, that's it—I might get in 'most any way—it's so big
and rambling. All the grounds you want to lurk in, too; it'd take a
company of police to shut them off. Then there's the house itself.
Let's see—third floor—trunk room, servants' rooms—couldn't get in
there very well except with a pretty long ladder—that's all right.
Second floor—well, I suppose a man could get into my bedroom from the
porch if he were an acrobat, but he'd need to be a very good acrobat
and there's no use borrowing trouble. Downstairs is the problem,
Cornelia, downstairs is the problem.

"Take this room now." She rose and examined it carefully. "There's
the door over there on the right that leads into the billiard room.
There's this door over here that leads into the hall. Then there's
that other door by the alcove, and all those French windows—whew!" She
shook her head.

It was true. The room in which she stood, while comfortable and
charming, seemed unusually accessible to the night prowler. A row of
French windows at the rear gave upon a little terrace; below the
terrace, the drive curved about and beneath the billiard-room windows
in a hairpin loop, drawing up again at the main entrance on the other
side of the house. At the left of the French windows (if one faced the
terrace as Miss Cornelia was doing) was the alcove door of which she
spoke. When open, it disclosed a little alcove, almost entirely
devoted to the foot of a flight of stairs that gave direct access to
the upper regions of the house. The alcove itself opened on one side
upon the terrace and upon the other into a large butler's pantry. The
arrangement was obviously designed so that, if necessary, one could
pass directly from the terrace to the downstairs service quarters or
the second floor of the house without going through the living-room,
and so that trays could be carried up from the pantry by the side
stairs without using the main staircase.

The middle pair of French windows were open, forming a double door.
Miss Cornelia went over to them—shut them—tried the locks. Humph!
Flimsy enough! she thought. Then she turned toward the billiard room.

The billiard room, as has been said, was the last room to the right in
the main wing of the house. A single door led to it from the
living-room. Miss Cornelia passed through this door, glanced about the
billiard room, noting that most of its windows were too high from the
ground to greatly encourage a marauder. She locked the only one that
seemed to her particularly tempting—the billiard-room window on the
terrace side of the house. Then she returned to the living-room and
again considered her defenses.

Three points of access from the terrace to the house—the door that led
into the alcove, the French windows of the living room—the
billiard-room window. On the other side of the house there was the
main entrance, the porch, the library and dining-room windows. The
main entrance led into a hall-living-room, and the main door of the
living-room was on the right as one entered, the dining-room and
library on the left, main staircase in front. "My mind is starting to
go round like a pinwheel, thinking of all those windows and doors," she
murmured to herself. She sat down once more, and taking a pencil and a
piece of paper drew a plan of the lower floor of the house.

And now I've studied it, she thought after a while, I'm no further than
if I hadn't. As far as I can figure out, there are so many ways for a
clever man to get into this house that I'd have to be a couple of
Siamese twins to watch it properly. The next house I rent in the
country, she decided, just isn't going to have any windows and
doors—or I'll know the reason why.

But of course she was not entirely shut off from the world, even if the
worst developed. She considered the telephone instruments on a table
near the wall, one the general phone, the other connecting a house line
which also connected with the garage and the greenhouses. The garage
would not be helpful, since Slocum, her chauffeur for many years, had
gone back to England for a visit. Dale had been driving the car. But
with an able-bodied man in the gardener's house—

She pulled herself together with a jerk.

"Cornelia Van Gorder, you're going to go crazy before nightfall if you
don't take hold of yourself. What you need is lunch and a nap in the
afternoon if you can make yourself take it. You'd better look up that
revolver of yours, too, that you bought when you thought you were going
to take a trip to China. You've never fired it off yet, but you've got
to sometime today—there's no other way of telling if it will work.
You can shut your eyes when you do it—no, you can't either—that's
silly.

"Call you a spirited old lady, do they? Well, you never had a better
time to show your spirit than now!"

And Miss Van Gorder, sighing, left the living-room to reach the kitchen
just in time to calm a heated argument between Lizzie and Billy on the
relative merits of Japanese and Irish-American cooking.

Dale Ogden, taxiing up from the two o'clock train some time later, to
her surprise discovered the front door locked and rang for some time
before she could get an answer. At last, Billy appeared, white-coated,
with an inscrutable expression on his face.

"Will you take my bag, Billy—thanks. Where is Miss Van Gorder—taking
a nap?"

"No," said Billy succinctly. "She take no nap. She out in srubbery
shotting."

Dale stared at him incredulously. "Shooting, Billy?"

"Yes, ma'am. At least—she not shoot yet but she say she going to
soon."

"But, good heavens, Billy—shooting what?"

"Shotting pistol," said Billy, his yellow mask of a face preserving its
impish repose. He waved his hand. "You go srubbery. You see."

The scene that met Dale's eyes when she finally found the "srubbery"
was indeed a singular one. Miss Van Gorder, her back firmly planted
against the trunk of a large elm tree and an expression of ineffable
distaste on her features, was holding out a blunt, deadly looking
revolver at arm's length. Its muzzle wavered, now pointing at the
ground, now at the sky. Behind the tree Lizzie sat in a heap, moaning
quietly to herself, and now and then appealing to the saints to avert a
visioned calamity.

As Dale approached, unseen, the climax came. The revolver steadied,
pointed ferociously at an inoffensive grass-blade some 10 yards from
Miss Van Gorder and went off. Lizzie promptly gave vent to a shrill
Irish scream. Miss Van Gorder dropped the revolver like a hot potato
and opened her mouth to tell Lizzie not to be such a fool. Then she
saw Dale—her mouth went into a round O of horror and her hand clutched
weakly at her heart.

"Good heavens, child!" she gasped. "Didn't Billy tell you what I was
doing? I might have shot you like a rabbit!" and, overcome with
emotion, she sat down on the ground and started to fan herself
mechanically with a cartridge.

Dale couldn't help laughing—and the longer she looked at her aunt the
more she laughed—until that dignified lady joined in the mirth herself.

"Aunt Cornelia—Aunt Cornelia!" said Dale when she could get her
breath. "That I've lived to see the day—and they call US the wild
generation! Why on earth were you having pistol practice, darling—has
Billy turned into a Japanese spy or what?"

Miss Van Gorder rose from the ground with as much stateliness as she
could muster under the circumstances.

"No, my dear—but there's no fool like an old fool—that's all," she
stated. "I've wanted to fire that infernal revolver off ever since I
bought it two years ago, and now I have and I'm satisfied. Still," she
went on thoughtfully, picking up the weapon, "it seems a very good
revolver—and shooting people must be much easier than I supposed. All
you have to do is to point the—the front of it—like this and—"