There was the click of an opening door, the noise of a little scuffle—then men's voices raised in an angry dispute. "What do I know about a flashlight?" cried an irritated voice. "I haven't got a pocket-flash—take your hands off me!" Bailey's voice answered the other voice, grim, threatening. The scuffle resumed.
Then Doctor Wells burst suddenly into the room, closely followed by Bailey. The Doctor's tie was askew—he looked ruffled and enraged. Bailey followed him vigilantly, seeming not quite sure whether to allow him to enter or not.
"My dear Miss Van Gorder," began the Doctor in tones of high dudgeon, "won't you instruct your servants that even if I do make a late call, I am not to be received with violence?"
"I asked you if you had a pocket-flash about you!" answered Bailey indignantly. "If you call a question like that violence—" He seemed about to restrain the Doctor by physical force.
Miss Cornelia quelled the teapot-tempest.
"It's all right, Brooks," she said, taking the front door key from his hand and putting it back on the table. She turned to Doctor Wells.
"You see, Doctor Wells," she explained, "just a moment before you rang the doorbell a circle of white light was thrown on those window shades."
The Doctor laughed with a certain relief.
"Why, that was probably the searchlight from my car!" he said. "I noticed as I drove up that it fell directly on that window."
His explanation seemed to satisfy all present but Lizzie. She regarded him with a deep suspicion. "'He may be a lawyer, a merchant, a Doctor...'" she chanted ominously to herself.
Miss Cornelia, too, was not entirely at ease.
"In the center of this ring of light," she proceeded, her eyes on the Doctor's calm countenance, "was an almost perfect silhouette of a bat."
"A bat!" The Doctor seemed at sea. "Ah, I see—the symbol of the criminal of that name." He laughed again.
"I think I can explain what you saw. Quite often my headlights collect insects at night and a large moth, spread on the glass, would give precisely the effect you speak of. Just to satisfy you, I'll go out and take a look."
He turned to do so. Then he caught sight of the raincoat-covered huddle on the floor.
"Why——" he said in a voice that mingled astonishment with horror. He paused. His glance slowly traversed the circle of silent faces.
Chapter Eleven.
Billy Practices Jiu-Jitsu
"We have had a very sad occurrence here, Doctor," said Miss Cornelia gently.
The Doctor braced himself.
"Who?"
"Richard Fleming."
"Richard Fleming?" gasped the Doctor in tones of incredulous horror.
"Shot and killed from that staircase," said Miss Cornelia tonelessly.
The detective demurred.
"Shot and killed, anyhow," he said in accents of significant omission.
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, even at the height of his irritation with Bailey, he had been blithe and offhand—a man who seemed comparatively young for his years. Now Age seemed to fall upon him, suddenly, like a gray, clinging dust—he looked stricken and feeble under the impact of this unexpected shock.
"Shot and killed from that stairway," he repeated dully. He rose from his knees and glanced at the fatal stairs.
"What was Richard Fleming doing in this house at this hour?" he said.
He spoke to Miss Cornelia but Anderson answered the question.
"That's what I'm trying to find out," he said with a saturnine smile.
The Doctor gave him a look of astonished inquiry. Miss Cornelia remembered her manners.
"Doctor, this is Mr. Anderson."
"Headquarters," said Anderson tersely, shaking hands.
It was Lizzie's turn to play her part in the tangled game of mutual suspicion that by now made each member of the party at Cedarcrest watch every other member with nervous distrust. She crossed to her mistress on tiptoe.
"Don't you let him fool you with any of that moth business!" she said in a thrilling whisper, jerking her thumb in the direction of the Doctor. "He's the Bat."
Ordinarily Miss Cornelia would have dismissed her words with a smile. But by now her brain felt as if it had begun to revolve like a pinwheel in her efforts to fathom the uncanny mystery of the various events of the night.
She addressed Doctor Wells.
"I didn't tell you, Doctor—I sent for a detective this afternoon." Then, with mounting suspicion, "You happened in very opportunely!"
"After I left the Johnsons' I felt very uneasy," he explained. "I determined to make one more effort to get you away from this house. As this shows—my fears were justified!"
He shook his head sadly. Miss Cornelia sat down. His last words had given her food for thought. She wanted to mull them over for a moment.
The Doctor removed muffler and topcoat—stuffed the former in his topcoat pocket and threw the latter on the settee. He took out his handkerchief and began to mop his face, as if to wipe away some strain of mental excitement under which he was laboring. His breath came quickly—the muscles of his jaw stood out.
"Died instantly, I suppose?" he said, looking over at the body. "Didn't have time to say anything?"
"Ask the young lady," said Anderson, with a jerk of his head. "She was here when it happened."
The Doctor gave Dale a feverish glance of inquiry.
"He just fell over," said the latter pitifully. Her answer seemed to relieve the Doctor of some unseen weight on his mind. He drew a long breath and turned back toward Fleming's body with comparative calm.
"Poor Dick has proved my case for me better than I expected," he said, regarding the still, unbreathing heap beneath the raincoat. He swerved toward the detective.
"Mr. Anderson," he said with dignified pleading, "I ask you to use your influence, to see that these two ladies find some safer spot than this for the night."
Lizzie bounced up from her chair, instanter.
"Two?" she wailed. "If you know any safe spot, lead me to it!"
The Doctor overlooked her sudden eruption into the scene. He wandered back again toward the huddle under the raincoat, as if still unable to believe that it was—or rather had been—Richard Fleming.
Miss Cornelia spoke suddenly in a low voice, without moving a muscle of her body.
"I have a strange feeling that I'm being watched by unfriendly eyes," she said.
Lizzie clutched at her across the table.
"I wish the lights would go out again!" she pattered. "No, I don't neither!" as Miss Cornelia gave the clutching hand a nervous little slap.
During the little interlude of comedy, Billy, the Japanese, unwatched by the others, had stolen to the French windows, pulled aside a blind, looked out. When he turned back to the room his face had lost a portion of its Oriental calm—there was suspicion in his eyes. Softly, under cover of pretending to arrange the tray of food that lay untouched on the table, he possessed himself of the key to the front door, unperceived by the rest, and slipped out of the room like a ghost.
Meanwhile