Of course! He ought to be at the Burton house; he ought to be trying to learn what was behind the marvel of the invalid girl who so suddenly became well; he ought to be eager and anxious to discover the objective of her cautious movements! At once, without any hesitancy, he hurried back along the way he had just come. Lights still burned brightly in comfortable little houses, set back from the street; they glowed with cheer and family life; but on the way he did not encounter a single pedestrian.
"Stanwick is strictly an indoor place on a rainy Sunday night," he mused, as he hurried along. "And I don't know that it hasn't the best of it."
He was inside the iron fence at No. 620 when he detected the first signs of a stir; these were the low sounds of careful steps on the walk and the murmur of conversation. He crouched in the shadow thrown by the house; the steps grew nearer and he recognized the voices as those of Big Slim and Bohlmier.
"I haf not much strength," wheezed the Swiss. "Holt me up! Ach! what a grip! It was like a gorilla's!"
As they drew opposite to Bat, he saw in an uncertain sort of way that the burglar was supporting his friend.
"Grip!" said Big Slim. "Well, the wallop he carried had some heft, too. Once I thought I had him; he stood right in front of me; but as I was reaching for my 'gat' he drove one at me that a bull couldn't have stood up under."
"That woman!" gasped Bohlmier, "she is full of tricks, yet. Who would haf thought she had somebodies here with her."
What the burglar replied Bat could not catch, for by this time they had reached the sidewalk. Under the light he saw the Swiss was holding to the other feebly, and that his steps were tottering and weak.
"I must have shut down on him even harder than I thought," said Bat to himself. "It was the knife that did it, and him whipping it out on Nora."
He waited until the two had disappeared; then he made his way softly around the house on the side he had not examined before. Here the windows were all blank and dark except one at the extreme rear. There he could see the colored maid washing some glassware; this window was partly open and he heard the woman's voice singing: