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!
CHAPTER THREE
PISTOL PRACTICE
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 j.a.panese 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 st.u.r.dily, 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-cla.s.s 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 un.o.bserved. "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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sloc.u.m, 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 j.a.panese 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 gra.s.s-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 j.a.panese spy or what?"
Miss Van Gorder rose from the ground with as much stateliness as she could muster under the circ.u.mstances.
"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--"
"Oh, Miss Dale, dear Miss Dale!" came in woebegone accents from the other side of the tree. "For the love of heaven, Miss Dale, say no more but take it away from her--she"ll have herself all riddled through with bullets like a kitchen sieve--and me too--if she"s let to have it again."
"Lizzie, I"m ashamed of you!" said Lizzie"s mistress. "Come out from behind that tree and stop wailing like a siren. This weapon is perfectly safe in competent hands and--" She seemed on the verge of another demonstration of its powers.
"MISS DALE, FOR THE DEAR LOVE O" G.o.d WILL YOU MAKE HER PUT IT AWAY?"
Dale laughed again. "I really think you"d better, Aunt Cornelia. Or both of us will have to put Lizzie to bed with a case of acute hysteria."
"Well," said Miss Van Gorder, "perhaps you"re right, dear." Her eyes gleamed. "I should have liked to try it just once more though," she confided. "I feel certain that I could hit that tree over there if my eye wouldn"t wink so when the thing goes off."
"Now, it"s winking eyes," said Lizzie on a note of tragic chant, "but next time it"ll be bleeding corpses and--"
Dale added her own protestations to Lizzie"s. "Please, darling, if you really want to practice, Billy can fix up some sort of target range--but I don"t want my favorite aunt a.s.sa.s.sinated by a ricocheted bullet before my eyes!"
"Well, perhaps it would be best to try again another time," admitted Miss Van Gorder. But there was a wistful look in her eyes as she gave the revolver to Dale and the three started back to the house.
"I should never have allowed Lizzie to know what I was doing," she confided in a whisper, on the way. "A woman is perfectly capable of managing firearms--but Lizzie is really too nervous to live, sometimes."