And to Stanwick he had gone. He saw the ugly evidence of a brutal crime; he saw a sick girl, very much attached to her brother, who quivered with dread at what had happened, and who, so he fancied, was even in a deeper state of fear at what might yet come to pass. Also he had watched and listened to a harassed young man who seemed to be groping his way amidst the bitter resentments of years, the frightful actualities of the moment, and a disconcerting sense of impending disaster.
"And that same young fellow's in bad," said the big man, to the darkness of the little room. "The cops always make it tough for the man they pick out to bear the weight of a crime. They try and twist everything to point his way."
And after this came the evident interest of Ashton-Kirk in the matter.
"I don't know but what he was interested even before that," thought Bat. "He saw something I didn't see—which ain't hard to do, for I'm a dub at that kind of a thing."
He remembered that Nora was even more agitated when he saw her again than she had been the first time. Young Burton was innocent! He must be freed! She knew he didn't do it! She knew!
"How did she?" Bat asked himself. "That's strong talk."
And, then, there was the bruise upon her forehead. Nora had deceived them about that. There were the footprints behind the rose arbor, there was the small revolver, there were the marks of the "creepers" in the yard at Stanwick and upon the scaffold outside Nora's window. And, then, there was also the apparently sudden resolution upon the girl's part to place her jewels in a place of security.
"People don't get these sudden notions for no reason at all," mused Bat. "And Nora had her own reasons for doing that. But," and there was a little tightening of his mind, an unpleasant straining which made him want to draw back from the thought, "she didn't want to tell anything about it. I believe in Nora. Nothing could drive me from that; but she is holding back on us; she knows things that she won't tell."
At some of these things Bat could guess; some others Ashton-Kirk's hints had partly covered. But the background, the reason for it all, puzzled him. He pondered deeply for a long time, but not a ray of light appeared through the mists that obscured the matter.
"But this burglar fellow's got something I want to know!" Bat sat up, and his forceful hands shut tightly. "And maybe it's just the thing we need. Maybe it's just the——"