Never
mind the revolver, I have one!" called Miss Cornelia.
"Righto!" called Beresford cheerily in reply. He found the candle,
lit it--
The party blinked at each other for a moment, still unable quite to
co-ordinate their thoughts.
Bailey rattled the knob of the door into the hall.
"This door's locked, too!" he said with increasing puzzlement. A
gasp went over the group. They were locked in the room while some
devilment was going on in the rest of the house. That they knew.
But what it might be, what form it might take, they had not the
remotest idea. They were too distracted to notice the injured man,
now alert in his chair, or the Doctor's odd attitude of listening,
above the rattle and banging of the storm.
But it was not until Miss Cornelia took the candle and proceeded
toward the hall door to examine it that the full horror of the
situation burst upon them.
Neatly fastened to the white panel of the door, chest high and
hardly more than just dead, was the body of a bat.
Of what happened thereafter no one afterward remembered the details.
To be shut in there at the mercy of one who knew no mercy was
intolerable. It was left for Miss Cornelia to remember her own
revolver, lying unnoticed on the table since the crime earlier in
the evening, and to suggest its use in shattering the lock. Just
what they had expected when the door was finally opened they did
not know. But the house was quiet and in order; no new horror faced
them in the hall; their candle revealed no bloody figure, their ears
heard no unearthly sound.
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