Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood

by The Bat

  After a swift glance of observation that gave her food for thought she did so.

  “You are Brooks, the new gardener?”

  The young man inclined his head.

  “Yes, madam. The butler said you wanted to speak to me.”

  Miss Cornelia regarded him anew. His hands look soft—for a gardener’s, she thought. And his manners seem much too good for one— Still—

  “Come in,” she said briskly. The young man advanced another two steps. “You’re the man my niece engaged in the city this afternoon?”

  “Yes, madam.” He seemed a little uneasy under her searching scrutiny. She dropped her eyes.

  “I could not verify your references as the Brays are in Canada—” she proceeded.

  The young man took an eager step forward. “I am sure if Mrs. Bray were here—” he began, then flushed and stopped, twisting his cap.

  “Were here?” said Miss Cornelia in a curious voice. “Are you a professional gardener?”

  “Yes.” The young man’s manner had grown a trifle defiant but Miss Cornelia’s next question followed remorselessly.

  “Know anything about hardy perennials?” she said in a soothing voice, while Lizzie regarded the interview with wondering eyes.

  “Oh. yes,” but the young man seemed curiously lacking in confidence. “They—they’re the ones that keep their leaves during the winter, aren’t they?”

  “Come over here—closer—” said Miss Cornelia imperiously. Once more she scrutinized him and this time there was no doubt of his discomfort under her stare.

  “Have you had any experience with rubeola?” she queried finally.

  “Oh, yes—yes—yes, indeed,” the gardener stammered. “Yes.”

  “And—alopecia?” pursued Miss Cornelia.

  The young man seemed to fumble in his mind for the characteristics of such a flower or shrub.

  “The dry weather is very hard on alopecia,” he asserted finally, and was evidently relieved to see Miss Cornelia receive the statement with a pleasant smile.

  “What do you think is the best treatment for urticaria?” she propounded with a highly professional manner.

  It appeared to be a catch-question. The young man knotted his brows. Finally a gleam of light seemed to come to him.

  “Urticaria frequently needs—er—thinning,” he announced decisively.

  “Needs scratching you mean!” Miss Cornelia rose with a snort of disdain and faced him. “Young man, urticaria is hives, rubeola is measles, and alopecia is baldness!” she thundered. She waited a moment for his defense. None came.

  “Why did you tell me you were a professional gardener?” she went on accusingly. “Why have you come here at this hour of night pretending to be something you’re not?”

  By all standards of drama the young man should have wilted before her wrath, Instead he suddenly smiled at her, boyishly, and threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

  “I know I shouldn’t have done it!” he confessed with appealing frankness. “You’d have found me out anyhow! I don’t know anything about gardening. The truth is,” his tone grew somber, “I was desperate! I HAD to have work!”

  The candor of his smile would have disarmed a stonier-hearted person than Miss Cornelia. But her suspicions were still awake.

  “‘That’s all, is it?”

  “That’s enough when you’re down and out.” His words had an unmistakable accent of finality. She couldn’t help wanting to believe him, and yet, he wasn’t what he had pretended to be—and this night of all nights was no time to take people on trust!

  “How do I know you won’t steal the spoons?” she queried, her voice still gruff.

  “Are they nice spoons?” he asked with absurd seriousness.

  She couldn’t help smiling at his tone. “Beautiful spoons.”

  Again that engaging, boyish manner of his touched something in her heart.

  “Spoons are a great temptation to me, Miss Van Gorder—but if you’ll take me, I’ll promise to leave them alone.”

  “That’s extremely kind of you,” she answered with grim humor, knowing herself beaten. She went over to ring for Billy.

  Lizzie took the opportunity to gain her ear.

  “I don’t trust him, Miss Neily! He’s too smooth!” she whispered warningly.

  Miss Cornelia stiffened. “I haven’t asked for your opinion, Lizzie,” she said.

  But Lizzie was not to be put off by the Van Gorder manner.

  “Oh,” she whispered, “you’re just as bad as all the rest of ‘em. A good-looking man comes in the door and your brains fly out the window!”

  Miss Cornelia quelled her with a gesture and turned back to the young man. He was standing just where she had left him, his cap in his hands—but, while her back had been turned, his eyes had made a stealthy survey of the living-room—a survey that would have made it plain to Miss Cornelia, if she had seen him, that his interest in the Fleming establishment was not merely the casual interest of a servant in his new place of abode. But she had not seen and she could have told nothing from his present expression.

  “Have you had anything to eat lately?” she asked in a kindly voice.

  He looked down at his cap. “Not since this morning,” he admitted as Billy answered the bell.

  Miss Cornelia turned to the impassive Japanese. “Billy, give this man something to eat and then show him where he is to sleep.”

  She hesitated. The gardener’s house was some distance from the main building, and with the night and the approaching storm she felt her own courage weakening. Into the bargain, whether this stranger had lied about his gardening or not, she was curiously attracted to him.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that I’ll have you sleep in the house here, at least for tonight. Tomorrow we can—the housemaid’s room, Billy,” she told the butler. And before their departure she held out a candle and a box of matches.

  “Better take these with you, Brooks,” she said. “The local light company crawls under its bed every time there is a thunderstorm. Good night, Brooks.”

  “Good night, ma’am,” said the young man smiling. Following Billy to the door, he paused. “You’re being mighty good to me,” he said diffidently, smiled again, and disappeared after Billy.

  As the door closed behind them, Miss Cornelia found herself smiling too. “That’s a pleasant young fellow—no matter what he is,” she said to herself decidedly, and not even Lizzie’s feverish “Haven’t you any sense taking strange men into the house? How do you know he isn’t the Bat?” could draw a reply from her.

  Again the thunder rolled as she straightened the papers and magazines on the table and Lizzie gingerly took up the ouija-board to replace it on the bookcase with the prayer book firmly on top of it. And this time, with the roll of the thunder, the lights in the living-room blinked uncertainly for an instant before they recovered their normal brilliance.

  “There go the lights!” grumbled Lizzie, her fingers still touching the prayer book, as if for protection. Miss Cornelia did not answer her directly.

  “We’ll put the detective in the blue room when he comes,” she said. “You’d better go up and see if it’s all ready.”

  Lizzie started to obey, going toward the alcove to ascend to the second floor by the alcove stairs. But Miss Cornelia stopped her.

  “Lizzie—you know that stair rail’s just been varnished. Miss Dale got a stain on her sleeve there this afternoon—and Lizzie—”

  “Yes’m?”

  “No one is to know that he is a detective. Not even Billy.” Miss Cornelia was very firm.

  “Well, what’ll I say he is?”

  “It’s nobody’s business.”

  “A detective,” moaned Lizzie, opening the hall door to go by the main staircase. “Tiptoeing around with his eye to all the keyholes. A body won’t be safe in the bathtub.” She shut the door with a little slap and disappeared. Miss Cornelia sat down—she had many things to think over—”if I ever get time really to thin
k of anything again,” she thought, because with gardeners coming who aren’t gardeners—and Lizzie hearing yells in the grounds and—

  She started slightly. The front door bell was ringing—a long trill, uncannily loud in the quiet house. She sat rigid in her chair, waiting. Billy came in.

  “Front door key, please?” he asked urbanely. She gave him the key.

  “Find out who it is before you unlock the door,” she said. He nodded. She heard him at the door, then a murmur of voices—Dale’s voice and another’s—”Won’t you come in for a few minutes? Oh, thank you.” She relaxed.

  The door opened; it was Dale. “How lovely she looks in that evening wrap!” thought Miss Cornelia. But how tired, too. I wish I knew what was worrying her.

  She smiled. “Aren’t you back early, Dale?”

  Dale threw off her wrap and stood for a moment patting back into its smooth, smart bob, hair ruffled by the wind.

  “I was tired,” she said, sinking into a chair.

  “Not worried about anything?” Miss Cornelia’s eyes were sharp.

  “No,” said Dale without conviction, “but I’ve come here to be company for you and I don’t want to run away all the time.” She picked up the evening paper and looked at it without apparently seeing it. Miss Cornelia heard voices in the hall—a man’s voice—affable—”How have you been, Billy?”—Billy’s voice in answer, “Very well, sir.”

  “Who’s out there, Dale?” she queried.

  Dale looked up from the paper. “Doctor Wells, darling,” she said in a listless voice. “He brought me over from the club; I asked him to come in for a few minutes. Billy’s just taking his coat.” She rose, threw the paper aside, came over and kissed Miss Cornelia suddenly and passionately—then before Miss Cornelia, a little startled, could return the kiss, went over and sat on the settee by the fireplace near the door of the billiard room.

  Miss Cornelia turned to her with a thousand questions on her tongue, but before she could ask any of them, Billy was ushering in Doctor Wells.

  As she shook hands with the Doctor, Miss Cornelia observed him with casual interest—wondering why such a good-looking man, in his early forties, apparently built for success, should be content with the comparative rustication of his local practice. That shrewd, rather aquiline face, with its keen gray eyes, would have found itself more at home in a wider sphere of action, she thought—there was just that touch of ruthlessness about it which makes or mars a captain in the world’s affairs. She found herself murmuring the usual conventionalities of greeting.

  “Oh, I’m very well, Doctor, thank you. Well, many people at the country club?”

  “Not very many,” he said, with a shake of his head. “This failure of the Union Bank has knocked a good many of the club members sky high.”

  “Just how did it happen?” Miss Cornelia was making conversation.

  “Oh, the usual thing.” The Doctor took out his cigarette case. “The cashier, a young chap named Bailey, looted the bank to the tune of over a million.”

  Dale turned sharply toward them from her seat by the fireplace.

  “How do you know the cashier did it?” she said in a low voice.

  The Doctor laughed. “Well—he’s run away, for one thing. The bank examiners found the deficit. Bailey, the cashier, went out on an errand—and didn’t come back. The method was simple enough—worthless bonds substituted for good ones—with a good bond on the top and bottom of each package, so the packages would pass a casual inspection. Probably been going on for some time.”

  The fingers of Dale’s right hand drummed restlessly on the edge of her settee.

  “Couldn’t somebody else have done it?” she queried tensely.

  The Doctor smiled, a trifle patronizingly.

  “Of course the president of the bank had access to the vaults,” he said. “But, as you know, Mr. Courtleigh Fleming, the late president, was buried last Monday.”

  Miss Cornelia had seen her niece’s face light up oddly at the beginning of the Doctor’s statement—to relapse into lassitude again at its conclusion. Bailey—Bailey—she was sure she remembered that name—on Dale’s lips.

  “Dale, dear, did you know this young Bailey?” she asked point-blank.

  The girl had started to light a cigarette. The flame wavered in her fingers, the match went out.

  “Yes—slightly,” she said. She bent to strike another match, averting her face. Miss Cornelia did not press her.

  “What with bank robberies and communism and the income tax,” she said, turning the subject, “the only way to keep your money these days is to spend it.”

  “Or not to have any—like myself!” the Doctor agreed.

  “It seems strange,” Miss Cornelia went on, “living in Courtleigh Fleming’s house. A month ago I’d never even heard of Mr. Fleming—though I suppose I should have—and now—why, I’m as interested in the failure of his bank as if I were a depositor!”

  The Doctor regarded the end of his cigarette.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said pleasantly, “Dick Fleming had no right to rent you the property before the estate was settled. He must have done it the moment he received my telegram announcing his uncle’s death.”

  “Were you with him when he died?”

  “Yes—in Colorado. He had angina pectoris and took me with him for that reason. But with care he might have lived a considerable time. The trouble was that he wouldn’t use ordinary care. He ate and drank more than he should, and so—”

  “I suppose,” pursued Miss Cornelia, watching Dale out of the corner of her eye, “that there is no suspicion that Courtleigh Fleming robbed his own bank?”

  “Well, if he did,” said the Doctor amicably, “I can testify that he didn’t have the loot with him.” His tone grew more serious. “No! He had his faults—but not that.”

  Miss Cornelia made up her mind. She had resolved before not to summon the Doctor for aid in her difficulties, but now that chance had brought him here the opportunity seemed too good a one to let slip.

  “Doctor,” she said, “I think I ought to tell you something. Last night and the night before, attempts were made to enter this house. Once an intruder actually got in and was frightened away by Lizzie at the top of that staircase.” She indicated the alcove stairs. “And twice I have received anonymous communications threatening my life if I did not leave the house and go back to the city.”

  Dale rose from her settee, startled.

  “I didn’t know that, Auntie! How dreadful!” she gasped.

  Instantly Miss Cornelia regretted her impulse of confidence. She tried to pass the matter off with tart humor.

  “Don’t tell Lizzie,” she said. “She’d yell like a siren. It’s the only thing she does like a siren, but she does it superbly!”

  For a moment it seemed as if Miss Cornelia had succeeded. The Doctor smiled; Dale sat down again, her expression altering from one of anxiety to one of amusement. Miss Cornelia opened her lips to dilate further upon Lizzie’s eccentricities.

  But just then there was a splintering crash of glass from one of the French windows behind her!

  Chapter Six - Detective Anderson Takes Charge

  *

  “What’s that?”

  “Somebody smashed a windowpane!”

  “And threw in a stone!”

  “Wait a minute, I’ll—” The Doctor, all alert at once, ran into the alcove and jerked at the terrace door.

  “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 Cornelia saw him run past the French windows and disappear into blackness. Meanwhile Dale, her listlessness vanished before the shock of the strange occurrence, had gone to the broken window and picked up the stone. It was wrapped in paper; there seemed to be writing on the paper. She closed the terrace door and brought the stone to her aunt.

  Miss Cornelia unwrapped the paper and smoothed out the sheet.

&
nbsp; Two lines of coarse, round handwriting sprawled across it:

  Take warning! Leave this house at once! It is threatened with disaster which will involve you if you remain!

  There was no signature.

  “Who do you think wrote it?” asked Dale breathlessly.

  Miss Cornelia straightened up like a ramrod—indomitable.

  “A fool—that’s who! If anything was calculated to make me stay here forever, this sort of thing would do it!”

  She twitched the sheet of paper angrily.

  “But—something may happen, darling!”

  “I hope so! That’s the reason I—”

  She stopped. The doorbell was ringing again—thrilling, insistent. Her niece started at the sound.

  “Oh, don’t let anybody in!” she besought Miss Cornelia as Billy came in from the hall with his usual air of walking on velvet.

  “Key, front door please—bell ring,” he explained tersely, taking the key from the table.

  Miss Cornelia issued instructions.

  “See that the chain is on the door, Billy. Don’t open it all the way. And get the visitor’s name before you let him in.”

  She lowered her voice.

  “If he says he is Mr. Anderson, let him in and take him to the library.”

  Billy nodded and disappeared. Dale turned to her aunt, the color out of her cheeks.

  “Anderson? Who is Mr.—”

  Miss Cornelia did not answer. She thought for a moment. Then she put her hand on Dale’s shoulder in a gesture of protective affection.

  “Dale, dear—you know how I love having you here—but it might be better if you went back to the city.”

  “Tonight, darling?” Dale managed a wan smile. But Miss Cornelia seemed serious.

  “There’s something behind all this disturbance—something I don’t understand. But I mean to.”

  She glanced about to see if the Doctor was returning. She lowered her voice. She drew Dale closer to her.

  “The man in the library is a detective from police headquarters,” she said.