“Yes. I rented it for the summer and moved in last Monday. We have not had a really quiet night since I came. The very first night I saw a man with an electric flashlight making his way through the shrubbery!”
“You poor dear!” from Dale sympathetically. “And you were here alone!”
“Well, I had Lizzie. And,” said Miss Cornelia with enormous importance, opening the drawer of the center table, “I had my revolver. I know so little about these things, Mr. Anderson, that if I didn’t hit a burglar, I knew I’d hit somebody or something!” and she gazed with innocent awe directly down the muzzle of her beloved weapon, then waved it with an airy gesture beneath the detective’s nose.
Anderson gave an involuntary start, then his eyes lit up with grim mirth.
“Would you mind putting that away?” he said suavely. “I like to get in the papers as much as anybody, but I don’t want to have them say—omit flowers.”
Miss Cornelia gave him a glare of offended pride, but he endured it with such quiet equanimity that she merely replaced the revolver in the drawer, with a hurt expression, and waited for him to open the next topic of conversation.
He finished his preliminary survey of the room and returned to her.
“Now you say you don’t think anybody has got upstairs yet?” he queried.
Miss Cornelia regarded the alcove stairs.
“I think not. I’m a very light sleeper, especially since the papers have been so full of the exploits of this criminal they call the Bat. He’s in them again tonight.” She nodded toward the evening paper.