The Bat

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 parv...

Miss Cornelia dropped her newspaper. Lizzie, frankly frightened, gave a little squeal and moved closer to her mistress. Only Billy remained impassive but even he looked sharply...

But Dale could bear it no longer. The sight of her lover, beaten, submissive, his head bowed, waiting obediently like a common criminal for the detective to lock his wrists in s...

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 unpreceden...

“It’s bolted at the top, too,” called Miss Cornelia. He nodded, without wasting words on a reply, unbolted the door and dashed out into the darkness of the terrace. Miss Corneli...

“If it is the Jap, I’ll get him!” Brooks’s voice was tense with resolution. He hesitated—made for the hall door—tiptoed out into the darkness around the main staircase, leaving...

“I don’t trust even the furniture in this house to-night!” he said. He took Dale hungrily in his arms and kissed her once, swiftly, on the lips. Then they parted—his voice chang...

“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 h...

The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight. When night fell, it was not a night of s...

The Doctor knelt beside the huddle on the floor. He removed the fold of the raincoat that covered the face of the corpse and stared at the dead, blank mask. Till a moment ago, e...

A key clicked in the terrace door—a voice swore muffledly at the rain. Dale lowered her revolver slowly. It was Richard Fleming—come to meet her here, instead of down by the drive.

“My place is here,” he said. “You two men,” Brooks and Billy moved forward to take his orders, “take another look through the house—don’t leave the building—I’ll want you pretty...

“The rest of it?” queried Dale with a show of bewilderment, silently thanking her stars that, for the moment at least, the incriminating fragment had passed out of her possession.

“Hush!” said Dale, her ears strained for sounds of conflict. Lizzie, creeping closer to her for comfort, stumbled over one of the Unknown’s feet and promptly set up a new wail.

Dale had failed with the Doctor. When Lizzie’s screams once more had called the startled household to the living-room, she knew she had failed. She followed in mechanically, wat...

All unconscious of the slur just cast upon her forty years of single-minded devotion to the Van Gorder family, Lizzie chose that particular moment to open the door and make a li...

The brief exchange of accusation and denial took but an instant of time, as the mantel swung wide open. The next instant there was a rush of feet across the floor, from the fire...

Miss Cornelia, too, had been pondering the problem of the Unknown. She reached a swift decision. If he were what he pretended to be—a dazed wanderer, he could do them no harm. I...

A few moments later Jack Bailey, seeing a thin glow of candlelight from the attic above and hearing Lizzie’s protesting voice, made his way up there. He found them in the trunk...

A brave man may be willing to fight with odds a hundred to one—but only a fool will rush on certain death. Reluctantly, dejectedly, Bailey obeyed—stuffed the money back in the s...

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 gon...