The Bat
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Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood >> The Bat
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15 The Bat, by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood
CONTENTS
ONE THE SHADOW OF THE BAT
TWO THE INDOMITABLE MISS VAN GORDER
THREE PISTOL PRACTICE
FOUR THE STORM GATHERS
FIVE ALOPECIA AND RUBEOLA
SIX DETECTIVE ANDERSON TAKES CHARGE
SEVEN CROSS-QUESTIONS AND CROOKED ANSWERS
EIGHT THE GLEAMING EYE
NINE A SHOT IN THE DARK
TEN THE PHONE CALL FROM NOWHERE
ELEVEN BILLY PRACTICES JIU-JITSU
TWELVE "I DIDN'T KILL HIM."
THIRTEEN THE BLACKENED BAG
FOURTEEN HANDCUFFS
FIFTEEN THE SIGN OF THE BAT
SIXTEEN THE HIDDEN ROOM
SEVENTEEN ANDERSON MAKES AN ARREST
EIGHTEEN THE BAT STILL FLIES
NINETEEN MURDER ON MURDER
TWENTY "HE IS--THE BAT!"
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--"
Get whom, in God's name--get what? Beast, man, or devil? A
specter--a flying shadow--the shadow of a Bat.
From thieves' hangout to thieves' hangout the word passed along
stirring the underworld like the passage of an electric spark.
"There's a bigger guy than Pete Flynn shooting the works, a guy
that could have Jim Gunderson for breakfast and not notice he'd et."
The underworld heard and waited to be shown; after a little while
the underworld began to whisper to itself in tones of awed respect.
There were bright stars and flashing comets in the sky of the world
of crime--but this new planet rose with the portent of an evil moon.
The Bat--they called him the Bat. Like a bat he chose the night
hours for his work of rapine; like a bat he struck and vanished,
pouncingly, noiselessly; like a bat he never showed himself to the
face of the day. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never
mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and
fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his
face. Most lone wolves had a moll at any rate--women were their
ruin--but if the Bat had a moll, not even the grapevine telegraph
could locate her.
Rat-faced gunmen in the dingy back rooms of saloons muttered over
his exploits with bated breath. In tawdrily gorgeous apartments,
where gathered the larger figures, the proconsuls of the world of
crime, cold, conscienceless brains dissected the work of a colder
and swifter brain than theirs, with suave and bitter envy. Evil's
Four Hundred chattered, discussed, debated--sent out a thousand
invisible tentacles to clutch at a shadow--to turn this shadow and
its distorted genius to their own ends. The tentacles recoiled,
baffled--the Bat worked alone--not even Evil's Four Hundred could
bend him into a willing instrument to execute another's plan.
The men higher up waited. They had dealt with lone wolves before
and broken them. Some day the Bat would slip and falter; then
they would have him. But the weeks passed into months and still
the Bat flew free, solitary, untamed, and deadly. At last even his
own kind turned upon him; the underworld is like the upper in its
fear and distrust of genius that flies alone. But when they turned
against him, they turned against a spook--a shadow. A cold and
bodiless laughter from a pit of darkness answered and mocked at
their bungling gestures of hate--and went on, flouting Law and
Lawless alike.
Where official trailer and private sleuth had failed, the newspapers
might succeed--or so thought the disillusioned young men of the
Fourth Estate--the tireless foxes, nose-down on the trail of news
--the trackers, who never gave up until that news was run to earth.
Star reporter, leg-man, cub, veteran gray in the trade--one and
all they tried to pin the Bat like a caught butterfly to the front
page of their respective journals--soon or late each gave up,
beaten. He was news--bigger news each week--a thousand ticking
typewriters clicked his adventures--the brief, staccato recital of
his career in the morgues of the great dailies grew longer and more
incredible each day. But the big news--the scoop of the century
--the yearned-for headline, "Bat Nabbed Red-Handed", "Bat Slain in
Gun Duel with Police"--still eluded the ravenous maw of the
Linotypes. And meanwhile, the red-scored list of his felonies
lengthened and the rewards offered from various sources for any
clue which might lead to his apprehension mounted and mounted till
they totaled a small fortune.
Columnists took him up, played with the name and the terror, used
the name and the terror as a starting point from which to exhibit
their own particular opinions on everything and anything. Ministers
mentioned him in sermons; cranks wrote fanatic letters denouncing
him as one of the even-headed beasts of the Apocalypse and a
forerunner of the end of the world; a popular revue put on a special
Bat number wherein eighteen beautiful chorus girls appeared masked
and black-winged in costumes of Brazilian bat fur; there were Bat
club sandwiches, Bat cigarettes, and a new shade of hosiery called
simply and succinctly Bat. He became a fad--a catchword--a
national figure. And yet--he was walking Death--cold--
remorseless. But Death itself had become a toy of publicity in
these days of limelight and jazz.
A city editor, at lunch with a colleague, pulled at his cigarette
and talked. "See that Sunday story we had on the Bat?" he asked.
"Pretty tidy--huh--and yet we didn't have to play it up. It's
an amazing list--the Marshall jewels--the Allison murder--the
mail truck thing--two hundred thousand he got out of that, all
negotiable, and two men dead. I wonder how many people he's really
killed. We made it six murders and nearly a million in loot--didn't
even have room for the small stuff--but there must be more--"
His companion whistled.
"And when is the Universe's Finest Newspaper going to burst forth
with 'Bat Captured by BLADE Reporter?'" he queried sardonically.
"Oh, for--lay off it, will you?" said the city editor peevishly.
"The Old Man's been hopping around about it for two months till
everybody's plumb cuckoo. Even offered a bonus--a big one--and
that shows how crazy he is--he doesn't love a nickel any better
than his right eye--for any sort of exclusive story. Bonus--huh!"
and he crushed out his cigarette. "It won't be a Blade reporter
that gets that bonus--or any reporter. It'll be Sherlock Holmes
from the spirit world!"
"Well--can't you dig up a Sherlock?"
The editor spread out his hands. "Now, look here," he said. "We've
got the best staff of any paper in the country, if I do say it.
We've got boys that could get a personal signed story from Delilah
on how she barbered Samson--and find out who struck Billy Patterson
and who was the Man in the Iron Mask. But the Bat's something else
again. Oh, of course, we've panned the police for not getting him;
that's always the game. But, personally, I won't pan them; they've
done their damnedest. They're up against something new. Scotland
Yard wouldn't do any better--or any other bunch of cops that I know
about."
"But look here, Bill, you don't mean to tell me he'll keep on
getting away with it indefinitely?"
The editor frowned. "Confidentially--I don't know," he said with
a chuckle: "The situation's this: for the first time the super-crook
--the super-crook of fiction--the kind that never makes a mistake
--has come to life--real life. And it'll take a cleverer man
than any Central Office dick I've ever met to catch him!"
"Then you don't think he's just an ordinary crook with a lot of luck?"
"I do not." The editor was emphatic. "He's much brainier. Got a
ghastly sense of humor, too. Look at the way he leaves his calling
card after every job--a black paper bat inside the Marshall safe
--a bat drawn on the wall with a burnt match where he'd jimmied the
Cedarburg Bank--a real bat, dead, tacked to the mantelpiece over
poor old Allison's body. Oh, he's in a class by himself--and I
very much doubt if he was a crook at all for most of his life."
"You mean?"
"I mean this. The police have been combing the underworld for him;
I don't think he comes from there. I think they've got to look
higher, up in our world, for a brilliant man with a kink in the
brain. He may be a Doctor, a lawyer, a merchant, honored in his
community by day--good line that, I'll use it some time--and at
night, a bloodthirsty assassin. Deacon Brodie--ever hear of him
--the Scotch deacon that burgled his parishioners' houses on the
quiet? Well--that's our man."
"But my Lord, Bill--"
"I know. I've been going around the last month, looking at
everybody I knew and thinking--are you the Bat? Try it for a
while. You'll want to sleep with a light in your room after a few
days of it. Look around the University Club--that white-haired
man over there--dignified--respectable--is he the Bat? Your own
lawyer--your own Doctor--your own best friend. Can happen you
know--look at those Chicago boys--the thrill-killers. Just
brilliant students--likeable boys--to the people that taught
them--and cold-bloodied murderers all the same."
"Bill! You're giving me the shivers!"
"Am I?" The edit or laughed grimly. "Think it over. No, it isn't
so pleasant.--But that's my theory--and I swear I think I'm right."
He rose.
His companion laughed uncertainly.
"How about you, Bill--are you the Bat?"
The editor smiled. "See," he said, "it's got you already. No, I
can prove an alibi. The Bat's been laying off the city recently--
taking a fling at some of the swell suburbs. Besides I haven't
the brains--I'm free to admit it." He struggled into his coat.
"Well, let's talk about something else. I'm sick of the Bat and
his murders."
His companion rose as well, but it was evident that the editor's
theory had taken firm hold on his mind. As they went out the door
together he recurred to the subject.
"Honestly, though, Bill--were you serious, really serious--when
you said you didn't know of a single detective with brains enough
to trap this devil?"
The editor paused in the doorway. "Serious enough," he said. "And
yet there's one man--I don't know him myself but from what I've
heard of him, he might be able--but what's the use of speculating?"
"I'd like to know all the same," insisted the other, and laughed
nervously. "We're moving out to the country next week ourselves
--right in the Bat's new territory."
"We-el," said the editor, "you won't let it go any further? Of
course it's just an idea of mine, but if the Bat ever came prowling
around our place, the detective I'd try to get in touch with would
be--" He put his lips close to his companion's ear and whispered
a name.
The man whose name he whispered, oddly enough, was at that moment
standing before his official superior in a quiet room not very far
away. Tall, reticently good-looking and well, if inconspicuously,
clothed and groomed, he by no means seemed the typical detective
that the editor had spoken of so scornfully. He looked something
like a college athlete who had kept up his training, something like
a pillar of one of the more sedate financial houses. He could
assume and discard a dozen manners in as many minutes, but, to the
casual observer, the one thing certain about him would probably
seem his utter lack of connection with the seamier side of existence.
The key to his real secret of life, however, lay in his eyes. When
in repose, as now, they were veiled and without unusual quality--
but they were the eyes of a man who can wait and a man who can
strike.
He stood perfectly easy before his chief for several moments before
the latter looked up from his papers.
"Well, Anderson," he said at last, looking up, "I got your report
on the Wilhenry burglary this morning. I'll tell you this about
it--if you do a neater and quicker job in the next ten years, you
can take this desk away from me. I'll give it to you. As it is,
your name's gone up for promotion today; you deserved it long ago."
"Thank you, sir," replied the tall man quietly, "but I had luck
with that case."
"Of course you had luck," said the chief. "Sit down, won't you, and
have a cigar--if you can stand my brand. Of course you had luck,
Anderson, but that isn't the point. It takes a man with brains to
use a piece of luck as you used it. I've waited a long time here
for a man with your sort of brains and, by Judas, for a while I
thought they were all as dead as Pinkerton. But now I know there's
one of them alive at any rate--and it's a hell of a relief."
"Thank you, sir," said the tall man, smiling and sitting down.
He took a cigar and lit it. "That makes it easier, sir--your
telling me that. Because--I've come to ask a favor."
"All right," responded the chief promptly. "Whatever it is, it's
granted."
Anderson smiled again. "You'd better hear what it is first, sir.
I don't want to put anything over on you."
"Try it!" said the chief. "What is it--vacation? Take as long as
you like--within reason--you've earned it--I'll put it through
today."
Anderson shook his head, "No sir--I don't want a vacation."
"Well," said the chief impatiently. "Promotion? I've told you
about that. Expense money for anything--fill out a voucher and
I'll O.K. it--be best man at your wedding--by Judas, I'll even
do that!"
Anderson laughed. "No, sir--I'm not getting married and--I'm
pleased about the promotion, of course--but it's not that. I want
to be assigned to a certain case--that's all."
The chief's look grew searching. "H'm," he said. "Well, as I say,
anything within reason. What case do you want to be assigned to?"
The muscles of Anderson's left hand tensed on the arm of his chair.
He looked squarely at the chief. "I want a chance at the Bat!" he
replied slowly.
The chief's face became expressionless. "I said--anything within
reason," he responded softly, regarding Anderson keenly.
"I want a chance at the Bat!" repeated Anderson stubbornly. "If
I've done good work so far--I want a chance at the Bat!"
The chief drummed on the desk. Annoyance and surprise were in his
voice when he spoke.
"But look here, Anderson," he burst out finally. "Anything else
and I'll--but what's the use? I said a minute ago, you had brains
--but now, by Judas, I doubt it! If anyone else wanted a chance
at the Bat, I'd give it to them and gladly--I'm hard-boiled. But
you're too valuable a man to be thrown away!"
"I'm no more valuable than Wentworth would have been."
"Maybe not--and look what happened to him! A bullet hole in his
heart--and thirty years of work that he might have done thrown
away! No, Anderson, I've found two first-class men since I've been
at this desk--Wentworth and you. He asked for his chance; I gave
it to him--turned him over to the Government--and lost him. Good
detectives aren't so plentiful that I can afford to lose you both."
"Wentworth was a friend of mine," said Anderson softly. His knuckles
were white dints in the hand that gripped the chair. "Ever since
the Bat got him I've wanted my chance. Now my other work's cleaned
up--and I still want it."
"But I tell you--" began the chief in tones of high exasperation.
Then he stopped and looked at his protege. There was a silence for
a time.
"Oh, well--" said the chief finally in a hopeless voice. "Go ahead
--commit suicide--I'll send you a 'Gates Ajar' and a card, 'Here
lies a damn fool who would have been a great detective if he hadn't
been so pig-headed.' Go ahead!"
Anderson rose. "Thank you, sir," he said in a deep voice. His eyes
had light in them now. "I can't thank you enough, sir."
"Don't try," grumbled the chief. "If I weren't as much of a damn
fool as you are I wouldn't let you do it. And if I weren't so damn
old, I'd go after the slippery devil myself and let you sit here and
watch me get brought in with an infernal paper bat pinned where my
shield ought to be. The Bat's supernatural, Anderson. You haven't
a chance in the world but it does me good all the same to shake hands
with a man with brains and nerve," and he solemnly wrung Anderson's
hand in an iron grip.
Anderson smiled. "The cagiest bat flies once too often," he said.
"I'm not promising anything, chief, but--"
"Maybe," said the chief. "Now wait a minute, keep your shirt on,
you're not going out bat hunting this minute, you know--"
"Sir? I thought I--"
"Well, you're not," said the chief decidedly. "I've still some
little respect for my own intelligence and it tells me to get all
the work out of you I can, before you start wild-goose chasing after
this--this bat out of hell. The first time he's heard of again
--and it shouldn't be long from the fast way he works--you're
assigned to the case. That's understood. Till then, you do what
I tell you--and it'll be work, believe me!"
"All right, sir," Anderson laughed and turned to the door. "And--
thank you again."
He went out. The door closed. The chief remained for some minutes
looking at the door and shaking his head. "The best man I've had
in years--except Wentworth," he murmured to himself. "And throwing
himself away--to be killed by a cold-blooded devil that nothing
human can catch--you're getting old, John Grogan--but, by Judas,
you can't blame him, can you? If you were a man in the prime like
him, by Judas, you'd be doing it yourself. And yet it'll go hard
--losing him--"
He turned back to his desk and his papers. But for some minutes he
could not pay attention to the papers. There was a shadow on them
--a shadow that blurred the typed letters--the shadow of
bat's wings.
CHAPTER TWO
THE INDOMITABLE MISS VAN GORDER
Miss Cornelis Van Gorder, indomitable spinster, last bearer of a
name which had been great in New York when New York was a red-roofed
Nieuw Amsterdam and Peter Stuyvesant a parvenu, sat propped up in
bed in the green room of her newly rented country house reading the
morning newspaper. Thus seen, with an old soft Paisley shawl tucked
in about her thin shoulders and without the stately gray
transformation that adorned her on less intimate occasions,--she
looked much less formidable and more innocently placid than those
could ever have imagined who had only felt the bite of her tart wit
at such functions as the state Van Gorder dinners. Patrician to her
finger tips, independent to the roots of her hair, she preserved, at
sixty-five, a humorous and quenchless curiosity in regard to every
side of life, which even the full and crowded years that already lay
behind her had not entirely satisfied. She was an Age and an
Attitude, but she was more than that; she had grown old without
growing dull or losing touch with youth--her face had the delicate
strength of a fine cameo and her mild and youthful heart preserved
an innocent zest for adventure.
Wide travel, social leadership, the world of art and books, a dozen
charities, an existence rich with diverse experience--all these
she had enjoyed energetically and to the full--but she felt, with
ingenious vanity, that there were still sides to her character which
even these had not brought to light. As a little girl she had
hesitated between wishing to be a locomotive engineer or a famous
bandit--and when she had found, at seven, that the accident of sex
would probably debar her from either occupation, she had resolved
fiercely that some time before she died she would show the world in
general and the Van Gorder clan in particular that a woman was quite
as capable of dangerous exploits as a man. So far her life, while
exciting enough at moments, had never actually been dangerous and
time was slipping away without giving her an opportunity to prove
her hardiness of heart. Whenever she thought of this the fact
annoyed her extremely--and she thought of it now.
She threw down the morning paper disgustedly. Here she was at 65
--rich, safe, settled for the summer in a delightful country place
with a good cook, excellent servants, beautiful gardens and grounds
--everything as respectable and comfortable as--as a limousine!
And out in the world people were murdering and robbing each other,
floating over Niagara Falls in barrels, rescuing children from
burning houses, taming tigers, going to Africa to hunt gorillas,
doing all sorts of exciting things! She could not float over Niagara
Falls in a barrel; Lizzie Allen, her faithful old maid, would never
let her! She could not go to Africa to hunt gorillas; Sally Ogden,
her sister, would never let her hear the last of it. She could not
even, as she certainly would if the were a man, try and track down
this terrible creature, the Bat!
She sniffed disgruntledly. Things came to her much too easily.
Take this very house she was living in. Ten days ago she had
decided on the spur of the moment--a decision suddenly crystallized
by a weariness of charitable committees and the noise and heat of
New York--to take a place in the country for the summer. It was
late in the renting season--even the ordinary difficulties of
finding a suitable spot would have added some spice to the quest--
but this ideal place had practically fallen into her lap, with no
trouble or search at all. Courtleigh Fleming, president of the
Union Bank, who had built the house on a scale of comfortable
magnificence--Courtleigh Fleming had died suddenly in the West
when Miss Van Gorder was beginning her house hunting. The day after
his death her agent had called her up. Richard Fleming, Courtleigh
Fleming's nephew and heir, was anxious to rent the Fleming house at
once. If she made a quick decision it was hers for the summer, at
a bargain. Miss Van Gorder had decided at once; she took an innocent
pleasure in bargains. The next day the keys were hers--the servants
engaged to stay on--within a week she had moved. All very pleasant
and easy no doubt--adventure--pooh!
And yet she could not really say that her move to the country had
brought her no adventures at all. There had been--things. Last
night the lights had gone off unexpectedly and Billy, the Japanese
butler and handy man, had said that he had seen a face at one of the
kitchen windows--a face that vanished when he went to the window.
Servants' nonsense, probably, but the servants seemed unusually
nervous for people who were used to the country. And Lizzie, of
course, had sworn that she had seen a man trying to get up the
stairs but Lizzie could grow hysterical over a creaking door. Still
--it was queer! And what had that affable Doctor Wells said to her
--"I respect your courage, Miss Van Gorder--moving out into the
Bat's home country, you know!" She picked up the paper again.
There was a map of the scene of the Bat's most recent exploits and,
yes, three of his recent crimes had been within a twenty-mile radius
of this very spot. She thought it over and gave a little shudder
of pleasurable fear. Then she dismissed the thought with a shrug.
No chance! She might live in a lonely house, two miles from the
railroad station, all summer long--and the Bat would never disturb
her. Nothing ever did.
She had skimmed through the paper hurriedly; now a headline caught
her eye. Failure of Union Bank--wasn't that the bank of which
Courtleigh Fleming had been president? She settled down to read
the article but it was disappointingly brief. The Union Bank had
closed its doors; the cashier, a young man named Bailey, was
apparently under suspicion; the article mentioned Courtleigh
Fleming's recent and tragic death in the best vein of newspaperese.
She laid down the paper and thought--Bailey--Bailey--she seemed
to have a vague recollection of hearing about a young man named
Bailey who worked in a bank--but she could not remember where or
by whom his name had been mentioned.
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