The detective went silently to close the iron doors. “What happened to you? Can’t you remember?” faltered Bailey, on his knees at her side.
The shadow of an old terror lay on the girl’s face, “I was in here alone in the dark,” she began slowly—“Then, as I looked at the doorway there, I saw there was somebody there. He came in and closed the door. I didn’t know what to do, so I slipped in—there, and after a while I knew he was coming in too, for he couldn’t get out. Then I must have fainted.”
“There was nothing about the figure that you recognized?”
“No. Nothing.”
“But we know it was the Bat,” put in Miss Cornelia. The detective laughed sardonically. The old duel of opposing theories between the two seemed about to recommence.
“Still harping on the Bat!” he said, with a little sneer, Miss Cornelia stuck to her guns.
“I have every reason to believe that the Bat is in this house,” she said.
The detective gave another jarring, mirthless laugh. “And that he took the Union Bank money out of the safe, I suppose?” he jeered. “No, Miss Van Gorder.”
He wheeled on the Doctor now.
“Ask the Doctor who took the Union Bank money out of that safe!” he thundered. “Ask the Doctor who attacked me downstairs in the living-room, knocked me senseless, and locked me in the billiard room!”