Anderson gave an involuntary start, then his eyes lit up with grim
mirth.
"Would you mind putting that away?" he said suavely. "I like to
get in the papers as much as anybody, but I don't want to have them
say--omit flowers."
Miss Cornelia gave him a glare of offended pride, but he endured it
with such quiet equanimity that she merely replaced the revolver in
the drawer, with a hurt expression, and waited for him to open the
next topic of conversation.
He finished his preliminary survey of the room and returned to her.
"Now you say you don't think anybody has got upstairs yet?" he
queried.
Miss Cornelia regarded the alcove stairs.
"I think not. I'm a very light sleeper, especially since the papers
have been so full of the exploits of this criminal they call the
Bat. He's in them again tonight." She nodded toward the evening
paper.
The detective smiled faintly.
"Yes, he's contrived to surround himself with such an air of
mystery that it verges on the supernatural--or seems that way to
newspapermen."
"I confess," admitted Miss Cornelia, "I've thought of him in this
connection." She looked at Anderson to see how he would take the
suggestion but the latter merely smiled again, this time more
broadly.
"That's going rather a long way for a theory," he said. "And the
Bat is not in the habit of giving warnings."
"Nevertheless," she insisted, "somebody has been trying to get into
this house, night after night."
Anderson seemed to be revolving a theory in his mind.
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